


The Way We Used to Be

by highfunctioning



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Love Triangles, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-18
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 13:16:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 25
Words: 38,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highfunctioning/pseuds/highfunctioning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Clint and Natasha are now the parents of a little girl and Clint has given up the Hawkeye guise in order to look after her. Natasha continues as Black Widow, but is slowly growing bored with the monotony of her day-to-day life. Her relationship with Clint is suffering as a result. Then Loki comes along... Rated M for profanity, violence, sexuality, etc. ... plus I'm paranoid</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Clint and Natasha are now the parents of a little girl and Clint has given up the Hawkeye guise in order to look after her. Natasha continues as Black Widow, but is slowly growing bored with the monotony of her day-to-day life. Her relationship with Clint is suffering as a result. Then Loki comes along... Rated M for profanity, violence, sexuality, etc. ... plus I'm paranoid

This was what felt right, the hard casing of a gun in her hand, adrenaline pumping through her veins, her boot on the chest of the target, pinning him to the ground. This was home.

  
Natasha pressed her sole a little harder into the burly German beneath her, Herr Fritz Ackermann. The man was an associate of the Italian mafia, born to an Italian mother and German father. He was currently involved in a major smuggling operation involving illegal nuclear weapons between SHIELD enemy Hydra and Northern Pakistan, though Natasha did not care about this right now. Her objective was to take him in for interrogation by Fury, not to gather information.

  
She reached into her utility belt and pulled out a small syringe given to her by SHIELD’s outfitters. “I’m not a doctor,” she told the pinned man, “So you’d better hold still.” Plunging the needle into the man’s neck she counted ten seconds before he blacked out. Then she pulled out her small standard-issue radio. “Agent Romanov,” she said, “Bring us home.”

***

Returning home was often the hardest part of a mission. Over her the course of her entire career, which let’s face it, consisted of most of her life, Natasha had found that she couldn’t just slip from Black Widow to Natasha Romanov as easily as so many of the others could. It seemed so easy for people like Clint, Steve, and Tony who were essentially the same person both on the battlefield and off, or Bruce who literally became a whole different…well not a different person exactly…but something else entirely. They could basically just walk from war zone to their living room with the only difference being the shedding of a costume, or ironman armor (or in Banner’s case, a few hundred pounds).

It was different for her. Though the differences between Black Widow and Natasha were sometimes difficult to spot, they made all the difference, and it was not a simple transition to make. It was a transition that had recently become a lot more difficult.

  
“MOMMEE!” shrieked a high voice as Natasha walked through the door to the small apartment Tony had given her in the Avengers’ Tower. A little mess of red hair and yellow pajamas came running at her from within.

  
“Hello Sofia,” Natasha replied somewhat stiffly, as she picked the little girl up.

  
From deeper within the apartment Clint emerged, a fuzzy blanket in one hand and a plastic tiara on his head. “Sweetheart,” he said, “Mommy needs a minute to get settled in again, and it’s time for bed. We need to finish your story.”

  
Sofia reluctantly allowed her mother to put her back on the ground and dragged her feet back to her father. “No fun,” she mumbled as she was wrapped in her blanket and lifted into her father’s arms.

  
“No fun huh?” asked Clint, “No I guess we never have any fun at all,” he said tickling her belly and making her shriek and wiggle in his arms. “I guess there won’t be any more stories tonight since they’re all no fun…” He carried the little girl back into her bedroom, giggling and protesting the end of the story.

  
Natasha took a deep breath and the smile slid off her face. This was why it was hard to come home. She couldn’t be Black Widow here, but she was never quite able to get rid of her either.

  
Exhausted, she flopped down on their sofa and waited for Clint to come back. It was amazing, she reflected, how fast things changed. Only four years ago she had come back from a mission with Clint and in a flurry of heightened hormones and a total disregard for common sense, little Sofia was suddenly brought into the picture. Now she was nearly three, and had changed everything. Clint had given up his role as Hawkeye, deciding that it was too dangerous when he had a little girl counting on him to tuck her in. Seemingly overnight, Clint had gone from her fighting partner and best friend to a diaper toting, plastic tiara wearing, Super-Dad, which was great for Sofia, but Natasha missed the old Clint a lot more than she’d ever admit.

  
Natasha hadn’t given up her Black Widow role. She couldn’t stand to stay home with the baby. She’d nearly lost her sanity while she was pregnant and unable to participate in missions. On more than one occasion (though she’d never tell Clint or Sofia this) she had considered just terminating the pregnancy altogether. Only the thought of how devastated Clint and the rest of the Avengers would be stopped her. He had been so thrilled when Natasha had told him, and had immediately told everyone. They’d all shown their excitement in different ways, from Thor who had delivered bone-crushing hugs declaring his happiness in his typical booming voice with a “MANY CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU”; to Steve who had shyly been handing Hawkeye America-themed baby clothes; to Tony who had initially expressed irritation for the two of them “going all domestic” on him, but by the next day was building a variety of contraptions that could be sent to school with the child and be used to kick the crap out of any bullies who bothered them.

  
Nobody had ever asked Natasha how she felt about it though. They’d just assumed.

  
In truth, Natasha hated this. As much as she loved her daughter, and had even grown to love Clint, she was bored. The monotony of her day-to-day life was getting to her. She hated being ordered around to wherever Fury decided he wanted her, she was sick of the responsibilities of parenthood, and was growing increasingly frustrated with the new domestic Clint. Their relationship was suffering because while she would come home with stories of espionage and action, there were only so many anecdotes about pabulum and diaper rash that she could handle. Clint was thriving on parenthood, but Natasha was suffocating.

  
She missed being free and impulsive, missed getting to pick and choose her employers as she had when she was younger. She was bored and trapped in domestic monotony, and as far as she could tell there was no way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Hope you're enjoying so far. Apologies in advance since I haven't exactly figured out italics or other formatting if it makes it difficult to follow. I am also on fanfiction.net under the same name (highfunctioning) and that version is definitely formatted properly. I always appreciate reviews! Enjoy the story!


	2. Chapter 2

Three days, fourteen hours, twenty-six minutes, and nineteen seconds. That was how long she had been home for. She had tried to figure out how many milliseconds it had been but her mental math capabilities were not so advanced.

She was restless, to say the least.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Since her return she had been trying to keep busy. She had trained for at least two hours each day, visited with all her teammates, spent time with Sofia, and had sex with Clint about six times while Steve and Tony babysat. She was still bored.

Natasha watched as Sofia gave another little spin in her princess outfit before her. It had been a gift from Bruce and was her absolute favorite thing to wear.

Or so Clint told her.

Sofia was putting on a “talent show” for her parents, dancing to some repetitive Top 40 song about single women and rings that was apparently her favorite as well.

Or so Clint told her.

Natasha frankly, was getting sick and tired of being told about her own daughter.

As she watched the little girl twirl unsteadily before her eyes, her mind drifted to SHIELD as it often did. She needed another mission! The only problem was that Fury had grounded her for the foreseeable future “as a reward for her devoted service” so that she could spend more time with her family. She had protested of course, but Fury had insisted. Natasha suspected Coulson had something to do with this. The man seemed to see everything nobody wanted him too, and would be just the type to interfere if he thought there was a problem with the Barton-Romanov family.

It pissed her off. There was nothing wrong with them other than the fact that she needed a mission!

She realized with a sudden start that Clint was talking to her, drawing her out of her reveries.

“What?” she asked ungraciously.

“I said, don’t you think Sofia is a great dancer?” he repeated with an irritated look, the one that he seemed to wear more often than not these days.

“Oh, yes…of course, wonderful…” she said unenthusiastically. She’d forgotten that she was supposed to be watching the little girl honestly.

“It was fantastic sweetheart,” Clint told the beaming child, “Why don’t you go get a juice box…you must be thirsty from all that dancing.”

Only a moment after their daughter left the room Clint rounded on her. “What is the matter with you?” he asked, “I know she’s no Beyoncé but can you at least try to be interested?”

“Who?” Natasha asked blandly.

“Clint opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted. “DADDEEEE…I need help wif a stwa…” called Sofia as she walked into the room carrying her apple juice carton.

The annoyance immediately melted from Clint’s face, “of course Baby,” he said taking her into his arms and placing the little straw in her box. Sofia rewarded him with a big kiss on the cheek.

Before she knew it, Natasha was on her feet and heading towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Clint asked after her.

“I need a walk,” she said and breezed quickly through the door. She didn’t look back, not even when she heard little Sofia’s cries of “Mommy come back, I wanna pway!”

 

***

She hadn’t intended to end up outside Tony’s workshop. Her feet it seemed had just led her down hallway after hallway until she arrived at the huge metal doors.

It wasn’t locked.

She stepped inside and shut the door softly behind her. The workshop was devoid of people, though she could hear some faint grunting noises and murmured words from behind the door that led off to Tony’s living quarters. What was he doing up there at this time of day? Usually the man never left his—

“Oh god…Steve!”

Ah.

Well, clearly he was busy.

Though Stark had never objected to any of the Avengers entering his workshop (except perhaps Thor who had a tendency to smash pieces of equipment when they did something that startled him), Natasha had a feeling that he might not appreciate an auditory audience at this particular moment. Natasha turned to leave, and as she did, caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of the flash of something. It was an incoming message on Tony’s laptop.

Tony’s laptop.

Tony Master-Hacker-of-Private-SHIELD-Databases Stark’s laptop.

The opportunity was just too sweet. If only she could just figure out his password…

“Jarvis?” she called into the deserted laboratory.

“Yes madam Widow?” the AI program responded.

“Did Mr. Stark have a password hint? I need to get a copy of Fury’s latest debriefing off his computer. He gave me permission a while back,” she invented. She new the computer would most definitely be programmed to not be able to say the password out loud, so she needed to find a way around this.

“He certainly did Madam Widow, however why do you not just ask him? According to my thermal scans of the building he is within his apartments.

“He is,” agreed Natasha, silently celebrating her finding of Stark’s loophole, “However I think he and Captain Rogers are somewhat… _indisposed_ right now.”

It took Jarvis all of thirty-one seconds to clue in. “Oh! Yes…of course…right well…um…”

If it were possible for a computer to be flustered, thought Natasha, This one certainly was.

“We shall not interrupt him then,” the computer continued, “Mr. Stark’s password hint is “What is Tony Stark’s favorite thing?”

“Thank you Jarvis,” she said.

“You are most welcome Madam Widow,” the supercomputer replied.

What is Tony Stark’s favorite thing? She thought. Steve probably.

Pulling the keyboard towards her she began to type.

“ _steverogers_ ”

**INCORRECT.**

“ _captainamerica_ ”

**INCORRECT**

“ _himself_ ” (Well it was worth a shot…)

**INCORRECT**

“ _booze_ ”

**INCORRECT**

“ _fucking_ ”

**INCORRECT**

“Damn it!” she snapped to the empty room. Think Natasha! What was something that Stark loved, but that nobody else would guess? What made him tick? 

An especially loud moan from the next room interrupted her thoughts. She flashed an irritated look in the door’s direction, and then it hit her. She had been close on the last guess…it had to do with sex, but what was it that Tony and Steve always called their “alone time” in civilized company?

“ _fondue_ ” (God knows why…)

**ACCEPTED.**

“Classy Stark,” she mumbled to herself. From there it took her all of four minutes to find his files on SHIELD, and from there it took another two to find…

“Loki,” she breathed. A file had just downloaded to the computer. Apparently Tony had rigged the machine to receive new Intel at the same time as Fury’s computer. A series of photos appeared on the screen, of a tall and thin man wearing large black sunglasses. The man at a market, the man getting out of a taxi, the man outside of an apartment building…

He was back. God knows how, but he was back.

She knew she should leave the information now, close the laptop and walk back to Clint and Sofia. She should let SHIELD deal with it, sending all the Avengers to take out Thor’s evil brother. She knew what she had to do…

Instead her fingers hit the ‘delete’ button, erasing all traces of the Intel from Tony’s computer and Fury’s.

Pausing for a moment, she made a decision.

She would not inform SHIELD. She would tell no one. She would take down Loki on her own, and prove to Fury and Coulson, and everyone else that she deserved to get the missions she wanted. She would no longer do whatever Nick Fury ordered. She was the Black Widow. She would control her own life.

She would take down Loki her way.


	3. Chapter 3

He was eating Thai take-out and watching reruns when the leather clad boot swung through his open window and collided with the side of his head, taking him to the floor. Cursing in Asgardian, he swung his elbow blindly connecting with the side of her face, and sending her flying back across the room, sprawling over the coffee table and sending bits of Kao Pad Gai and Moo Pad Prik flying against the walls. With an animalistic snarl she flipped on to her feet and leapt at him again, a fist flying at his nose. He caught it before she connected, but failed to anticipate the almost 20,000 volts of electricity that shot from the Widow’s Bite bracelets, up his arm, and blew him off his feet backwards into his kitchen.

The next thing he knew he was on his back, staring down the muzzles of two Glock 26’s, his arms pinned beneath two shins, and the thighs of a seriously pissed-off redhead tightening around his neck enough to make breathing slightly difficult.

_Well that was unexpected._

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t pull the trigger right here and now,” she hissed at him, “And you’d better be interesting—I don’t do small talk.”

“Or dinner apparently,” Loki replied, incredibly calm considering his predicament, “You owe me for my meal.”

Natasha amped the power on her bracelets up to their full 30 000 volts and struck Loki across the face.

It could have killed a regular person, but barely fazed the man beneath her. One of the advantages of being a demigod, she supposed, in addition to the brother of the God of Thunder (and by extension lightning). As it was, he still jerked horribly beneath her, his muscles tensing and causing him to bite down hard on his lower lip, drawing blood. He spat it out of his mouth, spraying Natasha with tiny flecks of blood.

“Why are you here?” she spat at him, pushing the muzzles into the pale flesh just beneath his cheekbone. If she fired now it would be at point blank rage and would decorate his white kitchen floor with gore and bits of his skull.

She received no response from the man, who seemed unfazed by the prospect of a messy and painful death.

Natasha paused for a moment savoring the power she now had. Finally she could do what she wanted with this man, make him pay for what he’d done to Clint, how he’d made Thor suffer, and what she knew he would do to little Sofia if he ever found out about her existence. Natasha smiled and adjusted the position of her finger on the trigger. This was going to be fun. “I would dearly love to be as gifted as you,” she murmured only a few inches from his face, “To unmake you the way you have done to my friends…” She paused, tightening her thigh grip slightly, and tracing the barrel of the gun in her right hand down his jawline; the same way she had often traced Clint’s with her lips or fingertips. “Unfortunately I haven’t the same…gifts…as you do Loki Laufeyson.” She stopped the path of the gun, holstered the one in her left hand, and replaced it with a knife. “Lucky for me,” she continued, “I know another way to…unmake a person…or a God as the case may be…” One gun still pressed to his head, Natasha directed the knife towards Loki’s mouth. Let’s start here…Silver Tongue…they’re going to have to give you a new nickname.”

“Go ahead,” Loki laughed, “What have I left to lose but my life? And one that is barely worthy of the title. Not one of the many realms will hold me within them, the exiled Trickster, Loki, Odin’s fake son, God of Mischief and Evil,” he began to laugh even harder, “Take it! I care no more for it!” he continued, nearly gasping for lack of air between the thigh choke and his uncontrollable mirth.

The Widow was thrown for a moment.

“You weakling!” Loki snarled suddenly, throwing her off of him.

She scrambled to her feet instantly sinking into her fight stance preparing to throw a series of kicks and punches. She was too slow to react though when he lunged towards her.

“Here!” he grabbed the muzzle in her hands and pressed it to his forehead, “Do what it is you so desperately want! Kill the Trickster! Kill me, while you can!” He pushed the gun so firmly against his skin that it left a circular mark when he pulled away. “Kill me or get out of my home, insubstantial as it may be compared to what should rightfully have been mine. I grow tired of your presence here. Kill me or get out and allow me to continue my so-called ‘new beginning’ in peace!” He stood with his arms held wide, daring her to make a move. His long black hair, though shorter than the last time he’d come to Earth was unkempt and dirty, his clothing in poor shape. He looked so…un-Loki that it threw her.

“Why are you here?” she repeated, her voice dangerously low as she stepped towards him.

“Where else am I to go, you idiot?” he asked her, “Banished from what used to be home, disowned by the father that stole me from my own kind, banned from every realm that exists-“

“Including this one,” Natasha put in.

“Including the only one that would contain the one of my own kind who would still greet me as ‘Brother’, though he cannot know of my presence here!” the demigod snapped furiously, “I have NOTHING left save for the knowledge that there is but one left who cares for me even if I am not to be in his presence! So I come to be near but not to see, to begin a shadow of a life formerly led, and to be forever in hiding from those whom I should rightfully rule! And so I say to you again! Kill me or get out!”

Breathing heavily he again pressed the barrel of the weapon to his face, his blue eyes glowering into hers, revealing more pain and anger than Natasha had ever seen, all seeming to attempt to force its way out of their depths into her.

In a moment that seemed to last forever, Natasha stared back. Then with one of her lightning fast movements, she slammed the end of the gun onto Loki’s temple, followed by a double blast from her bracelets.

The demigod dropped like a bag of bricks, unconscious before he hit the floor.

The Widow glanced around at the destruction remaining in the tiny Brooklyn apartment before slipping back out through the window in which she entered, scaling the wall and breaking into a sprint in the direction of the Avengers Tower, disappearing into the blackness of night.

As she ran, relishing the feeling of her heart racing and blood pumping it occurred to her that she had just a form of mercy, a concept almost completely foreign to her. Though she would be keeping an eye on him, she had let Loki go alive. How strange.

She also realized, as she came closer to the base of their building, still reflecting on her encounter with Thor’s volatile brother, that this was the best she had felt in nearly four years.


	4. Chapter 4

Clint was waiting up when she came in. “Where were you?” he asked her immediately.

Thankfully Natasha had had the foresight to change back in to the civilian clothing that was typical of her around the tower before she entered so she was able to effectively lie her way out of a confrontation. “I went for a run,” she told him. It wasn’t strictly speaking a lie at all. She just didn’t mention where she was running from, or why.

Thankfully Clint didn’t question it. They both knew that there was more to the story and that unspoken acknowledgement lay between them. She could keep her secret this time.

“Come sit with me,” he invited her, gesturing to the couch beside him. She sat and felt herself get folded into his arms. They lay together, him propped up on a small pillow, with her body pressed against his. She let her head fall back against his shoulder and rest there, a place so familiar and comfortable she immediately felt much of the tension melt from her body. He wrapped his arms a little tighter around her and breathed the smell of her hair, a combination of her lavender shampoo and the distinct smell of Natasha that he had grown so accustomed to. It seemed a little less familiar tonight. Maybe it was because she had been home so rarely lately, but holding her simply felt different.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to, not after this long. For nearly fifteen years he had known her, first as a target, then as a partner, as a friend, and finally as a lover and the mother of his child. It hadn’t escaped his notice that she had changed recently, since Sofia came along really and he had dropped the Hawkeye persona. He was no longer her partner then, and that had changed things more than he’d thought it would.

Truth be told, Clint wished he could talk to her about it, but didn’t know what he could say. He had never been good at relationships of any kind, frequently telling people ‘I see things better from a distance’. But you couldn’t have a relationship from a distance, though he knew they were making a fine attempt at it.  
He just didn’t know what to do anymore.

From down the hall there was a sound. A soft whining sound, which quickly turned into a full-on wail. It seemed that Sofia was having a bad dream. “DADDDYYYYYYYY!” she cried.

Clint reluctantly got up, leaving Natasha behind, responding to the cries of terror from his daughter. “Shhhh baby,” he whispered entering her room, “It’s alright sweetheart.”

Sofia’s room was a world of pink and yellow, her two favorite colors in the world. Clint crossed the room stepping over various plush animals to get to her four-poster bed. “It’s okay, it was just a dream.” He held her close to his chest where she buried her face, sobbing unintelligibly while he slowly rocked her in his arms, assuring her that everything was all right.

“Th-the b-bad m-man huwt mommy,” she told him, hiccupping over the words when he managed to settle her down a little. The admission sent he into fresh tears that caused a tightening in Clint’s chest.

“Mommy’s okay,” he reassured her, “She’s just sitting out in the living room with me.”

But Sofia was inconsolable.  
In the end Clint picked her up and carried the wet-cheeked little girl out to see her mother as proof that ‘the bad man’ hadn’t hurt her. Clint handed the little girl over to Natasha who sat her on her lap, stroking her hair and singing to her an Old Russian lullaby. Gradually the little girl calmed down, her eyes growing heavy and her thumb making its way between her red lips. She slept against her mother who in turn shifted to rest on Clint.

God, how he wished it could always be like this. This was perfection. He loved them both so damn much, but it was rare they were ever this peaceful. He was loath to move either of them even if it meant he’d wake up with a stiff neck tomorrow. For now it was enough to simply close his eyes, breathe the smell of his lover’s hair, and know that their daughter lay sleeping peacefully with them.

He didn’t know of course, that tonight was the last peaceful night he would have for a while.


	5. Chapter 5

Sofia woke them again only a few hours later. This time she wanted only Clint. He watched as Natasha’s eyes hardened over again and she shifted away from him again and sighed. It had been nice while it lasted he supposed. He had been foolish to think that the first family moment they’d had in ages would be enough to change things.

While Clint busied himself in the kitchen making scrambled eggs and toast Natasha took Sofia to her room to get dressed for the day. Sofia never liked changing out of her pajamas unless she was changing into Bruce’s princess costume, and so she wiggled and protested during the entire process. As she wrestled the clothing on to her daughter, Natasha found that she was even more distracted from her task than usual, her mind reeling with thoughts of Loki. Did he really mean what he said about attempting a fresh start? Normally she would have said no. Why was this time any different? And more importantly, why had she let him go (more or less) unharmed? Natasha was a trained killer. She had never before let a target go willingly. She had never failed to carry out a hit even if it took months; yet she had allowed Loki to continue on his way with only a few zaps from her bracelets. What the hell had gotten into her?

It was at this point that she finally noticed Sofia’s cries of protest, which had become significantly louder in the past moments. It appeared that she had been trying to put the little girl’s sock over her head.

_Whoops._

When the little girl’s clothes were finally on the right parts of her body, Natasha carried her back in to the living room adjoining the kitchen and put her on the floor where her dolls were. She then joined Clint in the kitchen, oblivious to his attempts to start a conversation, so consumed as she was by thoughts of the demigod.  
It wasn’t until she felt a little tug on her pant leg that she was drawn out of her reverie. “What?” she said roughly to the little girl trying to get her attention.

“Mommy pway wif me?” the toddler asked.

“Not now Sofia,” Natasha replied irritably.

“Mommy! Pway dolls!” the little girl demanded.

“Nat, just go play for a few minutes,” Clint said, “I can handle this.”

“PWEEEEAAAAASE,” Sofia begged.

Natasha ignored both of them. Sofia needed to learn to play alone, she told herself. God knows that when she was that age she’d learned to keep herself amused.

“MOMMY!” the little girl screamed, “PWAY DOLLS!”

“NOT NOW!” Natasha snapped, turning on her heel and shouting in the little girl’s face.

The little girl fell backwards, terrified, and shocked. It took only a few second before she began to wail. Nobody had ever shouted at her like that, least of all her mother, and it terrified her.

“Sofia stop crying!” snapped Natasha. She was not in the mood for this at all, not when she had a Trickster god to deal with.

“Nat, you scared her half to death,” Clint retorted, “Of course she’s damn well crying!” He bent over and picked up his daughter who buried her face in his shoulder and cried harder.

“How is this my fault?” Natasha snapped back, “I told her no dolls, and she wouldn’t stop. She needs to learn to amuse herself!”

“She is three years old and wanted to play with her mother!” Clint shouted, “And you fucking screamed at her!”

“She needs some discipline Barton!” she yelled back.

“She is a toddler!”

“You and I both know that by the time we were that age we’d had far worse than that when it came to punishment! That was NOTHING!”

“Yeah, and look at us now!” he bellowed, “We made a living killing people for money! Excuse me if I want a better future for my daughter than that!”

“Our daughter!”

“She might as well be my daughter for all the fucking time you spend with her!”

“If anything she is my daughter Barton!”

“She is just as much, if not more, mine, Romanov! You see her what, once a month or so? And you fucking hide out in some goddamn training room when you do!”  
Sophia curled up smaller in her father’s arms and cried harder. She was scared and both her parents were yelling. She clung to her Daddy so he could protect her, and shook from fear.

Around her the fight continued. “You are trying to turn my daughter against me!” Natasha accused, “You’re trying to steal her!”

“I don’t have to Natasha! You’re pushing her away yourself!”

Natasha’s fists clenched as she fought to hold on to her self-control. “We’ll see about that!” She turned to Sofia and reached out. “Come here Sofia…come on baby, Mommy’s sorry.”

The little girl wailed and clung to Clint tighter.

Natasha fell silent, her face becoming a mask. Without another word she spun on her heel and stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her.

She made it about forty feet before the tears began to fall.

She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t take it. She couldn’t keep coming back to a home where she hate-

No, a voice in her head told her. You don’t hate them. You don’t hate Sofia, and you don’t hate Clint.

But God, did it ever feel like it.

She was a bad mother; she knew it. She had never had one herself, and had always known that she wouldn’t make a good one. She had never wanted Sofia, who deserved so much better than a broken shell of a person, one whose ledger was so overflowing, so drowning with red.

What she wouldn’t give for a chance to do everything over, to go back to that night and stop herself from sleeping with Clint. If only she could make this never have happened. If only she could remove herself from this stagnant life. If only…

Natasha stopped walking and slumped down against a wall, tears flowing freely for the first time in years. She let everything pour out, not caring that she was currently destroying the image she’d cultivated over years, not caring that anyone could walk in at any moment and find her. She let herself drown in her misery and self-loathing.

Against the wall was where Bruce found her when he walked downstairs to get his morning cup of coffee.

His appearance caused both of them to freeze. They stood stock-still for a few moments regarding each other through uncertain eyes.

Though officially Natasha had forgiven Bruce for what had happened on the aircraft, there was still an element of discomfort between them and they both knew it.

After a moment it was Banner who spoke, “I usually drink my coffee in my lab alone,” he said, “But I wouldn’t mind some company today.”

Natasha took a deep, shuddering breath and prepared to decline. “Thanks for the offer,” she began, “But-”

“I also have a few extra ingredients to add to said coffee,” he interrupted, “Including a few I think the Irish are said to approve of…quite frankly you look like you could use it.”

Natasha looked up at him for a moment and gave a small smile. “After the morning I’ve just had, the Irish will have nothing on me,” she said dryly, “You forget that I’m Russian.”


	6. Chapter 6

Natasha had never been inside Bruce’s lab. It seemed funny now that she thought about it, given that she had been in pretty much every other room in the Avengers Tower at least once for one reason or another. But then again, maybe it wasn’t that surprising. Bruce had grown used to being something of a loner in his self-imposed isolation, and she knew better than most that old habits died hard.

The lab itself was different than what Natasha had expected. Tony’s lab was always a mess, bits and pieces of projects and experiments scattered all over, and half-finished pieces of machinery lying everywhere like victims on a battlefield. There never failed to be some kind of structural damage to the room from a misfire off the Iron Man armor or some other variety of an experiment gone wrong. His lab also seemed to double as a kind of man-cave, with a big television, a stereo system that blasted AC/DC and The Clash, and a number of very pricey cars that he’d parked in various places around the gigantic room. In short, the place screamed Tony Stark even more than the sign on the roof once had.

Bruce’s lab on the other hand was all about efficiency. Everything within it was made of steel or plastic, giving the whole place an air of professionalism. The music that played from the radio was the kind you might find on an easy listening station at a bank. Natasha could tell that the place was designed to be as calm and efficient as Bruce always tried to be. A large computer dominated the most space in the huge room, one with fourteen different screens that all seemed to be processing information from a capsule containing what appeared to be a liquid-like goo that was located nearby. The only truly personal thing about this lab in fact, was a small sitting area set off to one side that housed two armchairs, a small table, a minibar, and two large bookshelves. It was to here that Natasha headed.

Bruce poured her a cup of coffee, and the two of them sat down. “Nice place you’ve got in here Doc,” she said. Small talk had never really been her forte.

“Thank you,” Bruce said and lapsed into silence again.

Well this was going well.

Natasha stood up and began to browse through Banner’s bookshelves. The first one contained primarily science journals and newsmagazines, which she skimmed over and passed quickly. Many of them appeared to be written by Bruce himself, in technical terms she suspected would require some sort of higher education to even begin to comprehend. Then there was a number of works of fiction, ranging from Dickens, to Tolstoy, even so far as the latest Harry Potter book. That one surprised her, to say the least.

Natasha looked back and saw that Banner had picked up a newspaper and began reading that. He was clearly not used to having company, which suited her just fine. She’d rather he ignore her for the most part, than pester her with the questions he undoubtedly had regarding the state he had found her in in the hallway.

At the back of the second bookshelf, Natasha noticed a small box marked only with an “A” on it. It was unremarkable in itself, about the size of a cereal box, and Natasha opened it curiously.

Inside, it seemed Dr. Banner had been amassing a little collection of all kinds of Avengers-related news articles, photos, and newspaper clippings. She began to sift through them, smiling every once in a while when she came across a picture that brought back memories. There were photos of the six of them, bruised and bloody eating Shawarma after that first day, action shots of them fighting various enemies, clippings about the Hulk from back when Bruce had first been affected, and hundreds of articles on Stark Industries and Tony Stark himself.

That was a bit odd. Everything in this box seemed to either be Avengers or Tony Stark-related. It seemed Banner was quite the little Stark fanboy.

Natasha kept rummaging through the box. Right near the bottom she found an envelope. Curious, she opened it up. What she found inside made her freeze.

Out into her hands tumbled a series of photos. They were all of Tony. Tony shirtless at the beach; Tony walking in Central Park; a few photos from Tony’s birthday party of him and Bruce; a picture someone had snapped of the two men riding off in Stark’s convertible, back before “Stony” had gone public; and a photo that had been taken at Steve and Tony’s first anniversary dinner. In the original photo the two men had been holding hands, staring and smiling at each other. It seemed Bruce had ripped the photo in two, getting rid of Steve, leaving it to only Stark remained in the photo.

“Natasha do you want any more coff—” Bruce came around the corner and froze when he saw Natasha holding his secret envelope of pictures.

For a long moment neither of them spoke. For the first time in many years Natasha had no idea what to say. There was really no way to brush this off. There was only one real reason Bruce would have had these photos secreted away the way he did, one reason he would have had them at all. She knew this, and he knew she knew this.

“What are you doing with that?” Bruce asked her, his voice low and furious.

“I-I am so-” she began, fear creeping in to her voice. Bruce’s hands were beginning to shake with anger.

“Did I say you could go poking…go prying through my…my personal…” He was fighting it, fighting the emergence of “The Other Guy” who clearly wanted out.

Natasha was paralyzed with fear. “Bruce…I-”

“WHAT?” he shouted, his voice taking on the same tone that had frightened her so badly when she’d come to collect him the first time Loki had attacked. His entire body seemed to be vibrating, the two personas that were Bruce Banner warring with each other for dominance. Natasha turned and fled, heading for the lab door. She heard a crashing sound from behind her and turned in her panic in time to see Banner smash the capsule attached to his machine and stab a large needle of the gooey liquid into his left arm. He gave a cry of pain and then collapsed without warning on top of the shattered bits of glass.

***

When Bruce awoke he was lying on his back on a makeshift bed made from his two armchairs being pushed together. Everything hurt.  
With a groan, he tried to push himself up into a seated position, but found himself restrained by a hand on his chest that pushed him back down. “Hold still,” Natasha’s voice told him, “I haven’t gotten all the glass out yet.”

He flinched as he felt a series of sharp pulls from his left side, as Natasha pulled out the last ten pieces of broken glass and bandaged them. It was then that she allowed him to sit up.

“So…” he said quietly, “You know my little secret.”

“I suppose so,” Natasha replied, “I’m sorry for looking in the box.”

Bruce just shook his head. “Someone was bound to find out eventually…I mean, we do all live together.”

“How long have you…” she began, and then stopped, realizing it was none of her business.

“Years,” Bruce admitted. He seemed to want to just unload, after carrying his secret for so long. “Tony was the only person who ever treated me like I wasn’t just some bomb that was going to go off at any moment. I kind of, I don’t know…I guess I kind of fell in love with him the moment he started poking me with that stupid pen on the ship,” Bruce smiled sadly. “He’s brilliant, and completely unattainable in every way.”

“He doesn’t know?” Natasha asked.

“Of course not,” Bruce replied, “Besides, I am not exactly terrific dating material, especially not for someone like Tony. And he has Steve, so…” the doctor trailed off.

The two sat in silence for a long moment.

“He’s my best friend,” Banner finally said, “And I’ll have to just be okay with that.”

Natasha nodded. “How did you stop yourself there?” she asked after another long pause. “I thought for sure you were going to…well…”

“A serum that I’ve been working on,” the Doctor explained, seemingly grateful for the subject change. “Ideally it can stop a transformation as it’s happening. It still needs work though.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Natasha asked, “It seems to be working fine right now.”

“The serum works by dropping my body’s vitals to dangerous points where it can no longer produce enough energy to work the Hulk body, even with the excess gamma radiation. The problem is, that that puts my body at a very high risk of losing its function altogether. The body’s energy levels are very dependent on environmental factors, what I eat, how much I sleep, and whatever I’ve done that day. If the serum sucks out too much energy, then my body won’t have enough energy to work my heart or other organs. My life could depend on whether or not I had enough porridge for breakfast, or stayed up too late one night.”

“You could die?” Natasha asked, clarifying. She felt like hitting Banner, and Tony, and all the other geniuses that seemed to have no regard for their own health.

“I don’t know,” Bruce smiled, “A bullet couldn’t do it. But it’s a possibility. Or I could just remain in a vegetative state with my brain cells dying from lack of oxygen, until the serum wore off. And then who knows what kind of consequences that could have. Then there are also other…side effects…” the doctor suddenly looked very pale. Natasha just barely had time to grab an empty bucket that had contained cleaning supplies before the man threw up.

“Sorry,” he gasped.

Natasha helped him to his feet and down the lab towards the door. “I’m taking you to Coulson,” she told Bruce, “He needs to run a full physical on you…if that was just a prototype, God knows what you’ve now done to yourself.”

Shouting down his protests, Natasha and Bruce made their way out the door and down the hall. She would later reflect that at least her and Clint weren’t the only ones with serious drama to contend with at home.

_Poor Bruce._


	7. Chapter 7

_The night is darkening round me,_

_The wild winds coldly blow;_   
_But a tyrant spell has bound me,_   
_And I cannot, cannot go._

_The giant trees are bending_   
_Their bare boughs weighed with snow;_   
_The storm is fast descending,_   
_And yet I cannot go._

_Clouds beyond clouds above me,_   
_Wastes beyond wastes below;_   
_But nothing drear can move me:_   
_I will not, cannot go._

_I cannot go back_ , Natasha thought to herself, as she walked slowly down the deserted corridors of the Avengers Tower, _Not yet anyway_. She had spent the better part of the day with Bruce and Coulson at the first aid station Fury had insisted be installed in the tower. Coulson had put him through every test imaginable, just as furious as Natasha was that Bruce had taken such a great risk as to inject himself with the serum. When the genius had been cleared, they had gone their separate ways, Bruce heading back to his lab, and Natasha wandering off to the gym to vent her frustrations on one of Steve’s punching bags.

No more mention had been made of the revelations made by Bruce that had caused the almost-appearance of The Other Guy.

For hours Natasha had wandered the halls in silence, lost in her own thoughts as she tried to get over the fight that she and Clint had had that morning. What really got to her was not the fact that they had fought—that was unfortunately a common enough occurrence—but rather the hurt and fear that had been etched into Sofia’s face when Natasha had reached out to her. Children shouldn’t be scared of their own mothers.

_I am a bad parent_ , she thought to herself again.

There was no use pretending otherwise.

She would never be what Sofia and Clint deserved. She would always be Black Widow; spy, assassin, and lethal weapon—with “domestic” included nowhere in that description.

Maybe it’s time to just accept that.

If she couldn’t be good at the job of being a parent, maybe she should just focus on being good at the Black Widow job. She would just be Black Widow.

It was with this mindset that the Widow dressed in her combat suit and headed out into the blackness of night. She had an unfinished mission to attend to. She needed to check up on a certain demigod.

***

“Daddy,” a breathy voice whispered, “When’s Mommy gonna come back?”

Clint lay beside Sofia, her little body pressed snug to his chest as he tried to get her to sleep. Her back was facing him, and he’d been rubbing her back and humming. Truth be told, he’d thought she was asleep already. “I don’t know baby,” he told her honestly. He had not heard a word from her since their fight this morning, “I don’t know…”

It had altogether been a miserable day. Sofia had cried for hours after the incident that morning, and when she’d finally stopped had been just generally unhappy for the rest of it. She hadn’t wanted to play any of her usual games, had been restless and cranky through the Disney movies Clint had put on for her, and even when Clint had put her Beyoncé CD on had just lain on the floor and stared at a wall, sucking her thumb and toying with the set of Russian dolls she had been given for her birthday by Natasha. She would take them all apart and stand them side-by-side, then knock them over in one swoop of her tiny fist. It bothered Clint. She wasn’t usually so aggressive with her toys, and it didn’t take a genius like Stark or Banner to figure out what was upsetting her.

When the little girl was finally asleep, Clint slipped out of her bed and turned on the baby monitor. He stretched out his cramped muscles and stuck the smaller radio in his pocket, then left, shutting the door softly behind him.

He needed to get out of the small apartment, so he left and took the elevator down to the second floor where the Avengers’ communal kitchen was. He hadn’t been there in quite some time, preferring instead to use the smaller kitchen in their apartment to cook for Sofia and himself. He didn’t tend to take her down to the general areas of the Tower since there was always a risk that one of the guys would be walking around in a little less clothing than was decent, or conducting some kind of experiment that might hurt or spook her.

When the elevator doors opened he was surprised to see that the large kitchen was already full of people, with Tony, Thor, Steve, and Bruce all seated around the kitchen table, open bottles of various alcohols in front of them.

“BARTON!” Stark roared, clearly already somewhat inebriated, “Pull up stool!”

Clint smiled and sat down between Thor and Steve. He could definitely use a drink after the day he’d had. “Glad to see you’re showing restraint as always Tony.”

“Restraints? No those come later…just ask him,” Tony laughed gesturing to Steve.

Steve turned a vivid shade of red. “He’s kidding,” he said. “We don’t actually-“

“Believe me I don’t want to know,” Clint cut him off, pouring a drink for himself. “Thor,” he turned to the demigod beside him, “How’s Jane?”

“The lady Jane is very well,” he responded, “She sends-“

“She’s great, we’re all great, everything’s great!” Tony interrupted, “Stop being boring. Barton, drink more! You have catching up to do.”

Clint drank. And drank. And drank. Before long he was completely smashed, alongside the rest of the guys (those that were capable of it anyway).

This wasn’t the first time the male avengers had drunk together. It had led to many an eventful evening before, from the time that they had taken Steve to a strip club, probably traumatizing the poor guy for months afterward, to the time Thor had tried to set him up with Darcy, prompting Tony to confess his feelings in a fit of jealousy, to the time when Thor had brought some Asgardian ale, successfully getting every single one of the guys completely shitfaced including Bruce in Hulk form. They had somehow ended up on top of the Times Square JumboTron singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” as loudly as they could to Phil Coulson as he tried to talk them down over a loudspeaker.

Needless to say, you could never really know what to expect when the booze started flowing.

Tonight was no different. About two hours into their little booze party, Bruce had fallen asleep on the counter, Thor was lying on his back singing an Asgardian folk song in his booming voice, Steve was leaning against the wall on the floor with Tony sitting between his legs, tilting against him and rambling about some kind of technology that Steve couldn’t begin to comprehend, pausing intermittently to plant sloppy kisses on his boyfriend’s neck and face.

Clint lay on his back with his head against the wall, babbling on about his personal life. “I just don’t know what to do anymore Steve,” he said. “I love her like crazy but I hate her too. I’ve known her forever and I’ve been in love with her as long…but sshe never loved me,” he hiccupped and turned his face towards the only sober Avenger left. “I think she hates us now…I mean…she’ssssuch a bitch sometimes and…and she makesssSofia cry, and sometimes I wisshhe would just go away forever but then I’d miss her and…” he trailed off, slurring his speech. There was so much he wanted to get out about Natasha. How he’d loved her for years but it had never been returned, how he hated her and loved her, how he wanted her to leave and yet couldn’t live without her, “I’m a mess,” he said out loud to no one in particular. “I’m a messand it’s her fault.”

***

Natasha landed silently on the rooftop of the Brooklyn apartment being rented by Loki. She slipped down the fire escape effortlessly to his window. It was one of the only ones with lights on. The window was slightly open, trying to tempt a non-existent breeze into the sweltering building. It was here she paused and looked in.  
Loki sat at his kitchen table, seemingly entranced by a bowl in front of him, which glowed a light and otherworldly blue that reflected in his pale skin. Natasha watched him suspiciously. What was in the bowl? She glanced around, looking for another way to see in to the apartment, a better angle perhaps, but to her dismay found nothing. This was the only window in the entire place it seemed. She looked back to where the demigod sat and her heart leaped to her throat. He now stood directly at the open window, eyes locked on her, his face completely devoid of any emotion.

“I am told that it is a Midgardian custom to enter a dwelling through the door,” he said flatly, “A notion you seem to be unaware of.”

Natasha was momentarily stunned. How the hell had Loki moved that quickly? For that matter, how the fuck had he heard her at all?

Loki moved to one side, and pushed the glass so that it opened all the way. The gesture was an obvious invitation, and after a brief moment of hesitation, Natasha slipped beneath the arm and entered the apartment. The window snapped shut behind her, as she entered her old enemy’s home.


	8. Chapter 8

The inside of the apartment was tidier than Natasha remembered, though perhaps that had something to do with the fact that the last time she was here, they had attempted a fight to the death. The furniture had been repaired somewhat badly using glue and duct tape, but it looked otherwise as though Loki had been settling at least a little into his new life.

“Can I get you a drink?” his voice startled her out of her reverie.

“Alright,” she said somewhat hesitantly.

The tall man handed her a glass of brandy and poured himself one. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked her.

“You can’t really have thought that SHIELD would just you continue your existence without surveillance,” Natasha replied, “I am here to keep an eye on you.”

Loki laughed. “Somehow I think SHIELD would have sent a much larger welcome party,” he said, calling her bluff. “No, I think you are here on your own prerogative. The question is…why?”

Natasha cracked a small smile but didn’t reply, simply inclining her head slightly and offering her glass in a toasting motion.

Loki touched his glass to hers with a small clink. “I suppose I’ll just have to assume it’s for such excellent company as I.”

They both drained their glasses and Loki poured another. “So tell me,” he said, “How are the Avengers? Do they miss me?” he cracked a smile.

“Thor does,” Natasha said, “But he mourns more for the brother he lost than the one we fought.”

“Yes well Thor always did have such a persistent habit of believing the best of people. From the time of our youth he was never one to understand the subtlety of deceit or corruption.”

“Yes, who would have guessed that the god of thunder and lightning, a man who fights with an overlarge hammer, wouldn’t have a flair for subtlety?” Natasha replied.

“True,” the demigod allowed, “But with the exception of yourself, subtlety is not a common skill on your team. He fits right in.”

Natasha sat down at Loki’s kitchen table, trying to unobtrusively glance at what was in the bowl that had been glowing and had so entranced Loki earlier. It didn’t work. He noticed right away.

“It’s called a lengesett,” Loki explained, “literally meaning ‘long-seeing’. My fath-um…Odin gave it to me as a gift when I was very young. If used correctly it will show you a true depiction of anyone you wish, provided you have something of significance for the lengesett to draw upon. Odin used it to communicate with Thor and I when a battle took him far from home.”

Closer inspection showed Natasha that the ‘lengesett’ was a little stone bowl decorated with tiny intricate runes. Though at first glance it seemed to be a dull grey, the slightest movements sent little ripples and bursts of rainbow light across its surface. It was filled about two-thirds of the way with water. At the bottom of the bowl she could see there lay a small painted carving, of what appeared to be a dragon of some kind. It was highly detailed, but clearly worn in places where hands had worn away the paint. In many ways it reminded her of a toy that Sofia might play with. “What does it do?”

“If you have something of significance to a person, you can place it in the bowl and it will show you a true depiction of them, wherever they may be at the time,” Loki explained. “If you and the person you desire to view have a pair, you may use them to communicate, but otherwise it acts as a kind of one-way mirror. He who possesses a lengesett may see and hear the other person, but they will not know of it.”

Natasha nodded. “What is this then?” she asked, reaching in to the bowl for the little toy.

Before she could react her hand had been hit away with extreme force, as the demigod snatched it up. “That is NONE of your concern!” he snapped.

Natasha had her gun in her hand in under a second. “Don’t touch me!” she hissed, aiming the muzzle at his face. “Who are you spying on? Is it SHIELD? Fury?”

He didn’t reply.

“TELL ME!” she snapped, sending electricity jolting to her bracelets as they hummed to life.

Loki eyed the bracelets warily. Though they could not kill him, they had certainly been painful the last time, and he would rather not have them used against him so soon. With a deep sigh he relented, “I was watching Thor.”

Natasha’s first instinct was to suspect that Loki’s purposes were less than innocent. “Gathering intel? Assessing weaknesses?” she pushed him.

“No don’t be foolish,” he waved her off. “I…I suppose I was just keeping an eye on him.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” Natasha said scathingly, “You hate Thor, and you made that pretty clear the last time you were here.”

“Are you really so naïve that you think love and hatred can not co-exist?” Loki snapped at her, “I hate Thor, hate the shadow in which I was forced to grow up in, hate that he and Odin persisted in their lies for my entire life, but can not forget so easily the years in which we played together, fought together, grew up as brothers together! I hate him and I love him. I want to destroy him, tear him down to nothing, and yet cannot bear the thought of another harming him. Though I would not expect a human, so dull-witted and ignorant as you are to be able to comprehend the something such as that which spanned the course of millennia!”

Natasha stood her ground as the demi god directed his rage at her. It was amazing how Loki, who could stand and smile calmly as hundreds died by his hand, was really such a hurt and wounded person, no different from millions of others…no different from her. Because despite what he thought, she did understand. She had walked the thin line between love and hate with Clint and Sofia for years. And for the first time in her entire career she was truly able to empathize with the person at the business end of her gun.

Loki slumped down across the kitchen table from her, cradling his head in his hands. The more Natasha looked at him, the more of herself she saw staring back at her. In many ways they were similar people. Natasha knew she was no Captain America. She’d never fought for any greater good than her own. Likewise, the demigod was not an agent of destruction or chaos, but was operating only for his own vengeance. They had similar histories even. They both were abandoned by their parents; Natasha when her family handed her over to the people who trained her, and Loki when he found out that the family he’d loved had actually stolen him for other purposes; both toeing the line between love and hate of those closest to them; both nearly undone by their need to prove themselves, Natasha when her particular skillset had attracted SHIELD’s attention, and Loki’s two bids for power that nearly destroyed him and everyone else. In fact, she suspected that had they met years before, they could have been fighting on the same side, fighting to take down the universe that had fucked them over so many times. No, they were not that different at all.

She set her weapon down on the table and looked for a long moment at the lanky man across from her. While she had been consumed by her own thoughts, Loki had been fiddling sadly with the little toy dragon from the bottom of the lengesett. She cast a questioning glance at him, her gaze drawing him out of his own mind. “Why do you use that to watch Thor?” she asked him.

Loki was quiet for a long moment before he spoke. “The lengesett works by combining its own magic with the energy that comes from whatever item you place within it. The item has to be of some significance to a person with regards to another for it to work properly.”

“I don’t understand,” Natasha said.

“That’s hardly surprising, it’s a very abstract idea. The simplest way to explain it would be that emotions, real emotions, leave a kind of…a kind of invisible fingerprint on everything they touch. The lengesett reads that fingerprint and uses its magic to find the person. It’s highly complex, very few understand it.”

Natasha nodded. “And the dragon is…?”

“A gift from Thor from our childhood,” Loki said simply. In his mind he replayed the memory: Thor presenting the tiny dragon to him, having commissioned it from one of the oldest stone crafters of Asgard. Thor telling him that “Dragons are the smartest creatures brother, and you are like the dragon of our family”, how proud he’d been, and how grateful to his big brother, his hero…

“So if I wanted to use it, all I’d have to do is put something of value inside?” Natasha broke into his thoughts, clarifying.

“No,” Loki said sharply, “It is not for use by mortals. It requires knowledge of magic. Many Asgardians cannot even use it.”

Natasha’s face fell a little, “Oh,” she said simply.

They lapsed into silence.

It was finally broken by Loki, “I suppose I could work the magic for you,” he said finally, “Provided you have an item on hand.”

Natasha nodded pulling from her utility belt a tiny arrowhead charm attached to a chain clamped in to one of the compartments. The arrowhead was real, pulled from her shoulder when she had first joined SHIELD. It had been put there by Clint, an intentional misfire from when he’d been sent to take her down. He had claimed that he’d just had a good feeling about her, and hadn’t wanted to kill her. In many ways it had been the start of their tentative friendship, spurring on everything that had happened in the last fifteen years. _If that isn’t significant, I don’t know what is_ , she thought.

Loki accepted the charm, unhooking it from its chain and placed it in the bowl of the lengesett. It sunk to the bottom forming little ripples that danced across the surface and made the bowl flicker with waves of color. He bent low over it, tracing his fingers across the runes, first mumbling, and then softly singing words in a language Natasha couldn’t understand. She was mesmerized by the way his long fingers danced across the smooth surface of the bowl, the way his eyes seemed to grow a littlie brighter, and how his voice seemed to keep the complicated tune effortlessly. Then he abruptly ceased his singing, plunged a long finger knuckle deep into the water, and removed it. The surface smoothed and took on a new color, one that no longer reflected the room around them, or the edges of the bowl, but showed a very familiar scene instead, that of the kitchen of the Avengers Tower.

It was clear the boys had been busy in her absence. They were scattered across the room, all in varying states of inebriation. She saw Clint right away, sitting with Tony and Steve, the latter being the only apparently sober one around. He seemed to be deep in conversation with somebody, though she was fairly certain no one was listening to him but her.

“…I hate her too. I’ve known her forever and I’ve been in love with her as long…but sshe never loved me,” he hiccupped.

Natasha froze. She was all too aware who Clint was talking about. It cut straight to the bone. She knew she had been making them miserable, but Clint hadn’t actually said anything. Not until now…

“I think she hates us now…I mean…she’ssssuch a bitch sometimes and…and she makesssSofia cry,” he continued miserably, “And sometimes I wisshhe would just go away forever but then I’d miss her and…”

Natasha tore her eyes away, fighting back tears that threatened to pour over her cheeks. _She would not cry in front of Loki…_

Her eyes stung. Her breath was catching in her chest. God how she had failed. She had failed so badly. She took a deep breath and looked back into the lengesett, back into Clint’s miserable eyes as he mumbled to no one, “I’m a mess…I’m a messand it’s her fault.”

With a strangled sound she struck the side of the bowl, spilling the water and severing the connection. She seized the little arrowhead and shoved it back into her belt compartment.

“Natasha-“ Loki began. He had never used her first name before, but she ignored this.

Blood boiling, chest heaving, she flew like a deranged animal from the kitchen, through the window and out into the black of night. She was running faster than she ever had, running until her chest hurt, until she could barely breathe, until she collapsed on a rooftop miles away, giving herself up for the second time in as many days to tears, curled up in a ball, wishing that she could fix what had become far too broken to hold together…wishing she could fix herself.


	9. Chapter 9

Natasha awoke to familiar snores, despite having gone to bed alone the night before. Her body was sore, she had a headache, but she knew she was nowhere near as uncomfortable as Clint was, seriously hung-over as he was from his exploits the night before. He had risen and moved immediately to the bathroom where he threw up noisily.

In another time Natasha would possibly have followed him, helping him back to bed with a few tablets of Gravol and a cup of coffee, but she was still stinging from both the fight the day before, and the comments she had been privy to using the lengesett with Loki; and so dressed wordlessly and headed to the gym.

She worked out furiously, punching and kicking the weight bags, shadow boxing, and running laps. The workout was punishing, and made her muscles cry out in protest and sweat drip from her limbs, the ultimate goal being for the pain in her body to drown out the war going on in her head.

The only other person in the gym was Steve, but he stayed firmly on his side, back turned to her, and working his way through punching bags even faster than normal. It seemed Natasha was not the only one trying to shut the pain in their mind down.

When she had finished her workout, she returned to their small apartment, knowing that Sofia would likely be up now. She slipped silently through the doorway and down the hall, hoping she could take a shower before she had to deal with Clint and their daughter. For a brief moment she paused and listened at the little girl’s door, trying to learn if the girl had awoken yet.

“Baby bewuga in the deep bwoo sea, you swim so wide and you swim so fwee…He-ben abob and the sea bewo, and a wittle white whayuh on the go…”

Natasha smiled as she heard her daughter sing. She imagined that she must have been playing with the little stuffed animal Steve had bought her when he and Tony took her to Seaworld last month. Sofia had named it “Sandi” and always insisted on sleeping with it. She continued on her way towards the bedroom she shared with Clint.

When she entered he was lying helpless and sweaty on the bed, clutching his pounding head.

“Late night?” she asked drily.

“Don’t start,” he groaned. He was not in the mood to be chastised for drinking so heavily when he was supposed to be watching Sofia.

Natasha bristled, and stormed into the bathroom, shutting the door hard. She climbed in to the shower and felt her muscles release one by one under the hot water that ran over her sweaty skin. When she felt sufficiently clean, she walked out into their room, wrapped only in a towel to the sight of Clint hunched over their little waste paper basket. She made a sound of disgust. “Clean that up when you feel better, she told him, I’m taking Sofia out.”

She was pissed. Pissed at Clint for drinking and confirming what she’d known in her head, and pissed at herself for all the usual things. She dressed quickly in a pair of jeans, a plain white t-shirt, and her light brown leather jacket, then strode down the hallway to her daughter’s room to dress her.

It seemed Sofia was determined to be difficult today, refusing to wear anything but her princess dress, and screaming when Natasha tried to comb her curly hair.

“FINE!” Natasha finally snapped. “HAVE IT YOUR WAY THEN!” She tossed the comb aside and scooped the little girl into her arms and carried her struggling out the door.

She didn’t calm down until they reached the children’s gardens in Central Park. She had cried the whole way, drawing nasty glares, sympathetic frowns, and a few irritated comments from passengers on the subway while she yelled that she had forgotten to bring Sandi on their trip.

It wasn’t until she saw the outline of the Alice in Wonderland statue that was her favorite that she stopped crying and ran to play with some of the other children. One thing that could be said about her was this: she wasn’t shy.

Sighing heavily, Natasha seated herself on a bench overlooking the play area. It was barely noon and she was already tired and frustrated. She pulled out her cellphone and began reading through her emails, catching herself up on the last few days in news and SHIELD communications. It was like this that she allowed a peaceful hour to pass until…

“Hey!” she had looked up to see a tall man, casually dressed and carrying a long ornate walking stick, crouching and talking to Sofia a few feet away from all the other children. Her parenting instincts kicked into overdrive and she was on her feet in a second striding quickly towards the pair, her mind already calculating the best way to take down the stranger if he so much as tried to touch her little girl.

The man turned at the sound of her voice, and she realized with a start that the stranger was not in fact a stranger at all. “Loki,” she breathed, “What are you doing here?”

“I was simply enjoying a Saturday morning walk,” he replied, “This young lady came up to me and was curious about my walking stick. She seemed to think I was a magician of some variety. I had not realized she was your daughter, though I can now see the family resemblance.”

Natasha’s breath caught in her chest. She hadn’t wanted Loki or any other potential threat to know about Sofia. “Sofia, what have I told you about talking to strangers?” she admonished.

“But mommy he has a magic stick!” the little girl protested.

“Sofia, I told you don’t talk to people you don’t know!” she said angrily, “Now go back to the play area!”

The little girl bowed her head and shuffled slowly back towards the other children, her arms crossed, and a pout on her lips.

“Natasha believe me,” Loki began, interrupting her thoughts, “I had no intention of harming her in any way-“

“Yes, well excuse me if I don’t take your word for it,” she snapped, “God of lies and all.” She turned on her heel, and moved to leave but was stopped by his hand on her arm.

“I do not harm young ones,” he said, and when Natasha looked back she saw his eyes burning with an intensity that turned her insides to jelly. “I have had my own children, for whom I would destroy entire nations should someone lay a hand on them. I would not do that to someone else, least of all one who had shown me some kindness in an hour of need.”

Natasha was silent, lost in the unexpected fire of his tone.

Then he blinked and in a moment it was gone. “Please, if you’ll allow it, I would like to treat your daughter and yourself, perhaps to this Midgardian delicacy I have heard of called ‘iced cream’? I myself have not had the pleasure, but I have heard many good things.”

Natasha paused for a moment, weighing the possibilities. But really, what could go so terribly wrong with a little ice cream? Loki had not shown himself to be a threat so far, which was not of course to say that he wouldn’t, but she did not think that ice cream was going to spur the start of that and so accepted.

When they had gathered Sofia, the trio set off down a path towards a small but well-known ice cream parlor only a short distance away. The little girl, who was ecstatic at the promise of ice cream, a treat Natasha usually wouldn’t allow, ran several paces ahead of Loki and Natasha, singing a song she seemed to be making up on the spot about a tea party involving ducks, ponies, and a unicorn.

The adults remained quiet, walking side-by-side in a kind of awkward silence. Natasha knew their minds were both drifting back to the encounters they’d had in his apartment. He had seen her probably at her most vulnerable. That made two people if you included Bruce. Natasha was really going to have to get ahold of herself…get ahold of and destroy both the negative feelings she was having towards her family, and those of a very different sort that she was developing for Loki.

_WOAH! Where did that come from?_

No, there was no way she had just thought that. No way that she could, even for a moment, consider something of the sort.

She shook her head hard and continued walking, determinedly thinking of other things. The three of them ordered their cones, and headed back to the play area. About halfway down the path, Sofia took Loki’s hand, walking along and chattering away about her favorite ice cream and her dolls, with Loki telling her stories about growing up on Asgard.

“I remember one time, in the days of my youth,” he said to her, “my best friend and I decided to go on an adventure. We climbed up into the rafters of the castle lived in by my f-by the king Odin, and decided that we were going to tie ourselves to the beams and swing down to steal food from the great many guests he had invited to partake in a feast to celebrate the anniversary of a great victory.”

“Why didn’t you jus say pwease?” The little girl wanted to know.

“The king had not invited us to attend this feast. He felt that we were too young to stay up so late. In addition, we were two very…mischievous young men. We wanted to play a trick on the king.”

“I know a twick!” Sofia said very excitedly. “Knock Knock!”

Loki looked at Natasha, befuddled. “I beg your pardon?”

Natasha laughed, “It’s a joke,” she explained, “She’s trying to tell you a joke. You have to say ‘who’s there?’”

The demigod still looked like he didn’t get it, but decided to go along with it, “Who is there?”

“Joe,” the little girl said eagerly.

Loki looked at Natasha, “Who is Joe?” he asked her.

“You have to say ‘Joe who?’” she told him. “Seriously, how are you the god of jokes, but don’t know how a knock-knock joke works?”

He looked affronted, “I am known as the god of trickery and deceit,” he said, “There is a difference.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and smiled. He reluctantly smiled, and then turned back to Sofia, “Alright,” he said, “Joe who?”

Sofia beamed up at him, “Joe Man!” she shrieked and dissolved into giggles.

Loki looked at Natasha again, the confusion plain in his face, “I do not understand this ‘knock-knock’ joke.”

Natasha couldn’t help it. The combination of Sofia’s giggles and the look on Loki’s face was too much, and she burst into laughter, nearly doubling over.

Loki watched her, wide-eyed eventually giving over to laughter himself, the last of the three of them to end up doubled over on the pavement, drawing the confused and curious stares of several passersby. Natasha wrapped her arms around her daughter, sitting on the edge of the stone path, and leaning heavily on Loki who sat beside her.

“Could-could someone,” Loki began after a few minutes, gasping for breath, “please tell me what-what it is that we are laughing at?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha said, still giggling, “the joke doesn’t make sense. She came up with it out of nowhere, but your face…” she dissolved into giggles again.

They all sat, gasping for breath as their laughter captured them again. When they could finally breathe again, they sat for a moment in companionable silence. It wasn’t until a few minutes later, after Sofia had gone back to play with the other children, that Natasha remembered Loki’s story. “What happened at the feast?” she asked him.

Loki’s eyes took a far off look to them, a small smile remaining on his lips. “Our plan worked initially. We had stolen a great amount of food and ale. Unfortunately Thor rather over consumed the latter, and we were caught when he pushed himself off in the wrong direction. He landed with a rather undignified air in the middle of a great roasted Grovulshyst, and much disrupted the proceedings.”

“Thor?” Natasha asked, “I thought you said you did this with your best friend?”

“Yes,” Loki said simply, that far-off look still in his eyes.

Natasha fell silent again, for once not an uncomfortable one and turned her eyes towards where Sofia played.

They sat like that for hours, Loki’s arm lightly supporting her back, her head resting lightly on his shoulder. In fact it wasn’t until later that Natasha would even realize it, or acknowledge that fact that sitting so intimately, so peacefully with the man who was once her worst enemy, had been one of the most pleasant experiences of her adult life.


	10. Chapter 10

The house was surprisingly clean when Natasha and Sofia returned, which immediately put her on her guard. In her years of experience with the man, and particularly in the last few years of being his common-law partner/girlfriend/whatever you wanted to call it, she had learned many things.

First, that Clint was surprisingly sentimental when it came to their relationship. He was the one who always remembered anniversaries, important dates, and who would sometimes just randomly show up with a small gift, or decorate the house with a vase of her favorite flowers. He was the one who would lie awake at night after their lovemaking, long after he thought she had fallen asleep, and watch her eyes flutter behind closed lids, watch the steady rise and fall of her chest as she lay half-covered by the blankets, his arms wrapped tenderly around her. He was the one who would whisper to her, when he thought she couldn’t hear about how he loved her, how he wished she had said yes to his marriage proposal, and of the dreams he had for them one day in the future.

Second, that he absolutely hated cooking anything that took longer than fourteen minutes to cook. She had never really noticed before, given that most of the times they had eaten together it had been the type of meals consisting of hurriedly stuffing a few protein bars down their throat before rushing into a situation, but the man did not like to cook even when his life wasn’t in imminent danger. Though he was very conscious about making sure Sofia got all her necessary nutrients, Natasha knew that had he been left to his own devices the man would be subsiding on eggs, pasta, and whatever else Coulson left on their doorstep that was microwavable.

The third thing she had learned about Clint was that the man was a slob.

While Natasha would admit that she herself was no neat freak, she felt like Martha Stewart compared to him. The man lived in a perpetual state of untidiness. Under his watch dishes would pile up in the sink, laundry would overflow the hampers; clean clothes found their permanent place of rest on the floor; and toys, tools, books…whatever Clint had happened to pick up at some point, laid strewn across the apartment like the bodies of soldiers scattered on a battle field. Clint would always know where everything was at any given time, but to Natasha, looking for something in their apartment was a procedure that could take hours.

Which is why it was so surprising that when she walked in the door, she found the place to be nearly spotless. In the entrance hallway alone, every coat had been picked up and hung neatly, every pair of shoes paired up and lined up against the wall, and the obvious signs of a vacuum having been run through the place.

What the hell?

Drawing Sofia slightly closer to her body, just in case, Natasha moved carefully forward out of the hallway, and into the kitchen. She could hear murmurs coming from the room ahead. Someone seemed to be speaking very quickly and quietly, but with lots of expression. The tones of the voice, a man’s, rose and fell, though she could not clearly make out any actual words. She stretched out her hand in front of her and gave the wood separating the hall and kitchen a push.

And relaxed immediately.

Clint was seated, his head resting on his hands, fingers massaging his temples while Steve busied himself around the kitchen cleaning dishes, dusting, and tidying everything within sight.

He was clearly upset about something. Steve only cleaned this compulsively when he was seriously agitated. Though both men had fallen into silence the moment the door had swung open, Natasha knew that the speaker from before had been the Captain.

For a moment that dragged on nobody spoke. Then Clint smiled and turned to his daughter, “Hey baby,” he said to her, “how was the park?”

Sofia pushed her mother’s hands away from her and ran to climb into his lap, babbling on about the Alice in Wonderland statue, a bug she had squished while playing, and about how she and mommy had got “ice-cweam”. She didn’t mention anything about Loki, which Natasha was thankful for. She’d had a lie prepared, explaining that her “friend” was a SHIELD agent that Fury had assigned to work with her on some occasion (thankfully Clint didn’t pay close attention to her missions or partners anymore), but she was glad she didn’t need to use it. Lying to Clint was harder for her than with anyone else, because he knew her almost as well as she knew herself. He could tell ninety percent of the time, and so when she did have to do so, it required a huge amount of effort and concentration.

“Nat,” Clint said suddenly, cutting off the little girl in his arms. “Could you take Sofia to her room for a few more minutes? I think Steve brought her a present.”

Natasha’s eyes narrowed, focusing on Clint. She knew he was trying to get them out of the room so he could finish whatever he was talking about with Steve, a fact that rubbed her the wrong way. What could they possibly be talking about that she couldn’t hear? They were supposed to be teammates goddammit! Nevertheless, she scooped the wiggling Sofia out of Clint’s lap and carried her to her room.

As she did, she caught a little glimpse of the baby monitor, still clipped to Clint’s hip from last night.

_Well that could work._

Carrying the little girl to her room, Natasha made sure to distract Sofia with the pink and frilly doll that Steve had brought her, then grabbed the baby monitor and slipped out of the room, locking her daughter inside behind her.

Sneaking into their bedroom, Natasha turned the little device on, hoping that Clint hadn’t remembered to turn off the clipped-on version.

Luck it seemed was on her side today.

“…Just don’t know what to do anymore,” she heard Steve’s voice saying, “I mean, as much as I care for Tony…”

“Well have you talked to him about this?” she heard Clint say.

“How could I possibly talk to him about it?” Steve asked, “He grew up in your modern times! He would just tell me that I was letting my old-timer baggage get in the way of everything. Or what if he decided I just wasn’t worth the trouble?”

“Tony loves you,” Clint said. “Look, I knew the guy before you two got together, and I would have sworn that the guy couldn’t love anyone more than himself or his stupid robots, or whatever the hell he does down there every day. But somehow you’re different Steve. I don’t know why, but you are. He loves you and you love him, and I really don’t see what the issue is.”

“The issue is that I don’t know if I can anymore! I love him but it makes me sick!” He practically shouted the last few words, his voice cracking.

There was a long silence in which Natasha could barely breathe, barely move.

Finally she heard Steve’s voice again, and it sounded like he was crying. “I don’t know what to do Clint,” he whispered, barely audibly. Natasha had to press the speaker to her ear to make it out at all. “I am in love with Tony. He is everything to me, more important than…anything, more important than breathing. But…but the way things were when I was a kid, when I first became the captain…people saw…relationships…like ours as a bad thing…as a disgusting thing. I mean…I was raised a Christian…my mother, god if my mother could know about this…she would be so ashamed, and think I was going to hell…and I still wonder about that sometimes Clint,” he was rambling, choking out every word through tears. “And sometimes,” he continued through labored breaths, “sometimes when we’re…you know…I just want to crawl out of my skin, I just want everything to stop, and I…I’m so disgusted with myself Clint! I hate myself, and I hate him even though I don’t, and I just…I just can’t escape what I thought I knew my whole life!”

Natasha felt tears stinging behind her eyes. My God, poor Steve, she thought. How horrible must it be to have spent your entire life being taught to loathe what should have been the greatest experience of his life, falling in love, and living what should have been a dream?

For a long time the radio was silent, just the sound of typical static coming through. It was physically painful to listen to, just knowing that Cap was on the other end in such pain, and knowing she could do nothing about it, and that Clint was doing nothing about it. For what could he say really? What could he say that could ease the pain that Steve was in?

She couldn’t take it anymore and turned the device off, taking a moment to regain her composure before she returned to Sofia’s room.

As she sat on the bed, taking deep, calming breaths, she felt a tiny vibration from her left pocket. Reaching into it she pulled out her cellphone, which was blinking with a new email alert.

“Herr Ackermann has broken down under questioning,” it read. It took Natasha a moment to even remember back to her encounter with the burly German. It seemed like years ago in light of recent events.

“He has revealed the names of numerous associates. We need you to take them out. Report as soon as possible for debriefing.”  
It was signed simply as “Hill”.

Natasha stood very quickly, and headed to the closet, energy refilling each of her limbs. Her whole body thrummed with energy as she changed from her civilian clothing into the black body suit and gear that made her Black Widow. Finally she could resume her true identity again. A mission had arrived.

The Black Widow was ready to report. She would not fail. She could finally leave her troubles behind; forget about Steve, her familial responsibilities, and all her failures.

With that in mind, she kissed Sofia goodbye, and left a note in her playpen for Clint when he came to find her later. Then she left, bypassing the kitchen, and heading off into the big bad world, aimed towards SHIELD headquarters.

_Here we go._


	11. Chapter 11

Time seemed to run at a different speed while she was on a mission. Being deployed made time fly by, seemingly twice as fast as the rest of the world. Hours seemed to pass as minutes in the rush of adrenaline. In the time that normally would only allow for a training session or a grocery shop at home, it felt as though she was taking out entire battalions of mobsters and criminals, destroying the nefarious plans of entire criminal empires; and all while enjoying the hot rush of the adrenaline pumping through her veins.

  
This was what she loved. What she lived for.

  
Before she knew it, a week had passed. Then two. In fact it wasn’t until the middle of the third week that she finally stopped and thought long and hard enough to notice that in this entire time, she had not heard a word from Clint or Sofia. She had received no phone calls, texts, emails, webcam requests, or any other kind of acknowledgement from Clint. She received transmissions and updates, plans and all variety of highly encrypted and confidential data from SHIELD; but not once did her phone or computer display any kind of evidence that would lead her to believe that Clint had even noticed she was gone.

She finally cracked and while sitting in her hotel room (which was booked under the pseudonym Anastasia Johansson) picked up her STARKphone and dialed Clint.

With bated breath she waited while it rang.

He picked up after the fourth ring, “Natasha,” she said by way of greeting.

“Hi,” she said.

There was a silence. She didn’t know what to say to him, and he really didn’t seem to be out to help her come up with a topic. “How’s Sofia?” she finally asked.

“Sofia is being babysat by Tony and Steve. She is doing fine.”

Natasha didn’t quite know what to say to that, “Good, glad she’s…good.”

How very eloquent, she thought to herself. This is going just great. “And how have you been?” she asked.

It was the wrong thing to say.

“How have I been? Clint snapped with a short, humorless laugh. “Oh I’ve been just excellent, thanks! I’ve been having a really fucking great time for the last two weeks, looking after our daughter while her fucking mother runs around chasing after mobsters! I couldn’t have been happier when I left dealing with a very upset Captain America to find my goddamn daughter locked in her room—not with her mother like she was supposed to be—but ALONE and sitting next to a fucking NOTE that told me that, once again, you were off to go save the world and I was supposed to just stay at home alone again!”

“Clint-“ She began.

“Shut up!” he snapped, “Don’t fucking talk to me right now Natasha! Look I know you’ve got to go be the fucking Black Widow sometimes! But you just took off and said shit-all to me about it! We are supposed to be your fucking family and it’s like you can’t even remember that! You’d rather spend time with criminals and SHIELD agents than your own goddamn daughter! Jesus, you’d rather be putting a bullet in some fucker’s spine than spend ten goddamn minutes with me! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Natasha was speechless. “I was just trying to-“

“Trying to what Tash? Just trying to do your job?”

“Yes, but-“

“Jesus!” he exclaimed, “When will you fucking get it? When will we be more important than the job?”

Natasha couldn’t answer. A few tears ran silently down her cheeks as she fought herself for composure.

Clint had finally fallen silent on the other end, his breath sounding ragged, as though he too was fighting back tears.

“I…I don’t know what to say,” she began.

“Then don’t,” Clint said wearily. “Get Fury or Coulson to let us know when you’re coming back.” Then he hung up.

***

It took another two and a half weeks to complete the mission. Clint and Natasha spoke occasionally, though it was mostly very brief small talk. The dam holding back everything had finally broken, and it seemed like there was no going back from here. Things were out in the open now, though Natasha was not sure if that would be for better or worse.

When she came home, she found that Clint spent very little time in the apartment anymore. He would usually leave early in the morning, taking Sofia to go visit Bruce, Tony, Steve, or Thor—whoever was awake that early really—just so that he could have an excuse to be away from her. They barely spoke, hardly touched, and Clint had taken to sleeping in Sofia’s room. He pretended like it was unintentional, but they both knew better.

Even Sofia had started to behave differently. She no longer seemed to want much to do with Natasha. It was as though seeing the hurt that she’d caused her daddy had made her lose faith in her mother. When Natasha looked into the little girl’s eyes she saw the makings of herself in many ways.

It broke her heart. Children should not be so jaded, should not feel so completely let down by the world.

Every day was a new torture. It was like the whole apartment was playing a game of minesweeper, standing on tiptoe, waiting for the explosion that was inevitable.  
And when it came, it would shake the whole tower to its very foundations.


	12. Chapter 12

_Slap slap slap slap…_

She was running.

_Slap slap slap slap…_

Through the rain that poured in torrents down onto her, soaking her to her very bone.

_Slap slap slap slap…_

Her feet hit the ground hard, splashing through puddles, breaking through ripples and spraying the gutters and curbs.

_Slap slap slap…_

Sh's being unusually loud. A potential threat could hear her coming from miles away. She should be being more careful—she’s always in a state of danger with her profession—but she doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does anymore.

It’s nearly three in the morning, but she’s outside in the torrential downpour anyways. Thunder claps. Lightning flashes in the distance. She briefly wonders if this is Thor’s response to the fight, or if this one is legitimately on Mother Nature’s shoulders.

 _My god_ , she thought, _the fight…_

She couldn’t even remember how it had started. It seemed one minute she had slipped in to say goodnight to Sofia, accidentally encountering Clint in the process, and the next all hell had broken loose. Clint had made some offhand comment about how there was no point since Sofia was already asleep, and how she was never actually there when her daughter needed her and the next thing she knew she had been in the middle of a screaming match with him.

_God how they had fought…_

When she looked back it was like she was watching from a distance. She could hear herself screaming at him, terrible things, things she hated herself for saying. She had broken, with every bit of resentment she had for him, for getting her pregnant, for forcing her into this life, for assuming she was okay with having a baby, for being such a natural parent while she suffocated…it had all come pouring out. God she had said such terrible things…

And he had lost it.

He had screamed at her too, really screamed, reminding her of all her failures, reminding her how terrible a mother she was, how bad a person, how her ledger would forever gush red, how it would pour unheeded down the sides until she drowned them all in it because she would never be able to wipe it all out, not when she couldn’t stop adding to it daily.

Sofia had woken up to her parents fighting over her, and began to cry, wailing and ignored by them until Steve had come and taken her away, shaking and exhausted while Clint and Natasha fought on.

 _Slap slap slap slap_ …she kept running, an agonizing memory loop playing in her head:

The looks on everyone else’s faces as they witness the undoing of Clint and Natasha…

The way Sofia had finally passed out in Steve’s arms…

The way the big man had broken down and cried silently, unable to fix what had clearly been broken for so long…

And finally Clint’s words surprisingly calm in all the commotion, “I want you to leave and stay the hell away from Sofia and me. We’re done.”

How it had felt like a slap in the face, more painful than anything she had ever felt, more devastating than any injury…

Natasha now knew what it was like to be broken. She had nothing left. No family, nowhere to go, nothing left but the street beneath her feet and the rain on her skin.

_Slap slap slap slap…_

She would run until it stopped hurting, run until the pain in her body could drown out the agony in her mind. She would run as far and as fast as the storm and the wind could take her, until the fire in her legs burned hot enough to warm the coldness she felt in her heart, like a deep and angry pain in her chest. She would run until all the fire, all the pain, and all the emptiness led her to a familiar Brooklyn apartment block. She had only been here twice before, and in past years would never have even considered it as a place to go.

Cold, wet, and miserable she lifted her hand and pressed the buzzer for apartment 316.

“Hello?” a voice said through the static.

“Hi,” she said. “It’s me…can I come up?”

There was a long paused, wherein she held her breath waiting.

“Of course,” said Loki finally, “Please come in.”

The door made a buzzing sound as it unlocked for her to enter.


	13. Chapter 13

She had offered him no explanation, and he had not asked for one.

When she entered the apartment he had not said a word, only gestured towards the well-padded couch where a blanket was hung over the back. For a moment he disappeared into another room and returned with a pillow. The offer was clear and she accepted it. He seemed to understand that she did not want to talk about it right then. Perhaps he was waiting until the morning, and she was grateful. Natasha knew she probably couldn’t handle reliving the night’s events at that moment. That if she did she might lose whatever remaining self-control she had left.

“The bathroom is down the hallway and to the left,” Loki said quietly, drawing her attention back to the present. “I rest in the room directly opposite.”

She nodded her understanding.

He hesitated, seemingly unsure of what else to say. “Erm…goodnight then,” he finally said, retreating into his room.

As the door shut behind him, Natasha sunk down on to the plush sofa. She wasn’t tired. She felt sticky and damp, and as though the storm had caked on a layer of filth on her skin. She didn’t even want to imagine what her hair must look like.

She headed down the hallway to the bathroom and stripped off her filthy clothes, dropping them in the sink, which she filled with soap and water. Tomorrow perhaps, she could search out a Laundromat, or perhaps sneak back in to the tower to collect her clothes. This would do for now.

She avoided making eye contact with the messy woman in the mirror. That woman was not her reflection. Black Widow would never be caught looking so vulnerable, so damaged.

She took a shower and reveled in the feeling of that other woman disappearing down the drain. It was funny how a little hot water and soap could make a person feel reborn again after a hard day. When she stepped out from under the stream of steaming water, she clad herself in Loki’s bathrobe, which she found hanging from a peg on the door, and hung her soaking clothes over the towel rack to dry.

There. This was already better.

Heading back into the living area, she sat down heavily on the couch, and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders.

Almost immediately her thoughts drifted back to the Avengers tower. What were the guys doing now? Had anyone gone to bed? Was Sofia sleeping? Had she woken up and cried for her mommy to come save her from a monster?

 _Stop_ , she told herself. _Don’t think of that right now_.

To distract herself, Natasha stood up and began to pace around the apartment. Though it was mostly impersonal and uninteresting, every now and then she’d catch some little detail that revealed a new part of the demigod’s personality. Numerous crosswords lay scattered around the coffee table. Many were completed, even the difficult ones that geniuses like Bruce and Tony had some difficulty with. On one table a few empty mugs that smelled of strong coffee stood. It seemed Loki was something of a caffeine addict, just like Tony. A tiny dartboard hung on one wall, the tiny projectiles scattered across it, not like the ones in their apartment, which were always lined up almost dead center from when Clint got bored.

She wandered in to the kitchen deciding to pour herself a glass of water and not, absolutely not continue down that train of thought. As she passed the wooden table, she caught sight of something familiar out of the corner of her eye. It was the lengesett, half buried under a hastily thrown newspaper.

She shouldn’t look. She knew that, but she couldn’t resist. Seating herself at the table she pulled the little stone bowl towards her and gasped.  
It was as though she was staring at some footage of a video camera that was pointed at her. At first she thought she was merely seeing a reflection of herself in the bowl, but quickly came to the realization that the angles were wrong for that, and that her face seemed backwards to what she would see in a mirror. She raised her hand and watched as the bowl did the same only backwards. Loki, it seemed, had been watching her.

  
Sticking her hand into the bowl, she felt something small and hard touch her fingers, and pulled it out. It was a tiny button, one that looked very similar to the ones that were on her Black Widow boots.

“You left that here the first time you came,” a voice said from behind, startling her to her feet.

She whirled around, button clenched in her fist to see the tall, dark-haired Asgardian standing casually against kitchen doorframe.

She flushed a dark red. “You were watching me.” It was not a question.

“Yes,” he said. “For a while now.”

Her temper flared up. “Why?” she asked, “Were you spying on me? Trying to find some kind of weakness? Trying to gather intel on the Avengers?”

The demigod began to laugh. He laughed long and hard. It unnerved her to say the least.

“You don’t understand,” he laughed, “After everything, you are still so oblivious,” he laughed even harder, leaning against the doorframe for support.

Natasha was unimpressed. She crossed the room quickly until she was only a foot or so away from him. “Enlighten me then,” she hissed, her voice low and threatening.  
It took a moment, but after a moment Loki’s face became somber. “I did not watch you to cause you any harm Natasha he said, his voice surprisingly intense. It was reminiscent of the day in the park, and caused a shiver to run up her spine. “I only watch you,” he hesitated, “because I…I was concerned, and you are very…” he took a half step closer to her, “very” another half step, “important to me.” His face was close, too close to hers.

“You are important to me too,” she said softly (why had she said that? And more importantly why was every inch of her body suddenly alive and hyper aware of everything? Why did she feel like little bolts of electricity were sparking back and forth between them?) She could barely breathe, her thoughts coming in quick and sharp bursts, her brain consciously taking in only bits and pieces of her surroundings.

The way his hand had travelled up to rest on her hip, and why wasn’t she pulling away? Was it hot in here or just her? His pupils blown so large that the irises seemed to disappear…

“I was concerned for your wellbeing when you were sent on your quest for SHIELD,” he murmured, his voice still low and intense. His eyes seemed to be drinking in the sight of her face and what was her hand doing on his chest, and oh god he was even closer now, and what was she doing, and-

And then their lips met and she stopped thinking altogether.

Things progressed fast, his hands pulling the belt of the bathrobe loose, falling into a tangle of limbs on the couch.

Natasha’s brain was shouting at her to stop, to think about what she was doing, and whom she was doing it with, but she silenced it. She didn’t care right now. She owed nothing to anybody but herself and Loki, the man who’d taken her in when she had nothing, who was rough and unfamiliar, who bit and sucked at her but took it just the same from her. The man who was safety, and kindness coupled with danger and the taste of a forbidden apple all in one.

It was a release, and when they were finished she lay beside him on the floor, sleeping more soundly than she had in months, determined to feel nothing but the bliss and relief that she felt now through the rest of the night and well into morning. Her dreams claimed her as she slept quietly, curled around the bare and pale chest of the demigod, warm and comfortable, and all at once feeling more at home and important, curled in the embrace of her former enemy, than she had in her own home in a longer time than she could remember. For once, she slept in peace.


	14. Chapter 14

Loki awoke very suddenly, never having actually been asleep. His eyes shone in the pale beams of moonlight that streamed through his windows, glowing a very bright and nearly fanatical blue. Finally. Finally, his moment had come.

He looked down at the redhead curled up against his chest and smiled. His plan had worked perfectly. Months of preparation, weeks of executing this plan just perfectly, enough to make her believe him to have reformed…all of it coming to this.

Careful not to stir the woman from her sleep, he reached his arm beneath the sofa and pulled out a long object long secreted beneath the plush cushions. His staff, the one he’d just barely managed to rescue from the clutches of Nick Fury and his organization after his last visit to Earth seemed to glow brighter than it ever had before.

Perhaps it had missed him in its years of hiding. He certainly had missed the feel of it in his hands.

Angling his body just so, he gently touched the pointed end to the soft skin of Natasha’s chest. She didn’t even shift in her sleep.

Instantly, a flood of thoughts and memories overcame him, rushing into his mind with the force of a speeding train.

_The image of the interior of a scientific lab, Bruce Banner sitting head in hands as he poured his heart out to the woman before him. “Tony was the only person who ever treated me like I wasn’t just some bomb that was going to go off at any moment. I kind of, I don’t know…I guess I kind of fell in love with him the moment he started poking me with that stupid pen on the ship,” Bruce smiled sadly. “He’s brilliant, and completely unattainable in every way.”_

_“He doesn’t know?” Natasha asked._

_“Of course not,” Bruce replied”…_

A new image, one of the doctor nearly hulking out, but stabbing himself with a needle and dropping to the ground as though he’d been shot. 

Then an explanation: _“It’s a serum that I’ve been working on,” the Doctor said, “Ideally it can stop a transformation as it’s happening. It still needs work though.”_

_“What’s wrong with it?” Natasha asked, “It seems to be working fine right now.”_

_“The serum works by dropping my body’s vitals to dangerous points where it can no longer produce enough energy to work the Hulk body, even with the excess gamma radiation. The problem is, that that puts my body at a very high risk of losing its function altogether. The body’s energy levels are very dependent on environmental factors, what I eat, how much I sleep, and whatever I’ve done that day. If the serum sucks out too much energy, then my body won’t have enough energy to work my heart or other organs. My life could depend on whether or not I had enough porridge for breakfast, or stayed up too late one night.”_

_“You could die?” Natasha asked._

_“I don’t know,” Bruce smiled…_

Another scene change, this time to a bedroom, staring at a baby monitor: _“The issue is that I don’t know if I can anymore! I love him but it makes me sick!” The voice said, crackling through the speaker. “I don’t know what to do Clint,” it whispered, barely audibly. “I am in love with Tony. He is everything to me, more important than…anything, more important than breathing. But…but the way things were when I was a kid, when I first became the captain…people saw…relationships…like ours as a bad thing…as a disgusting thing.”_

Loki realized with a start that the voice belong to Steve Rogers.

_”Sometimes when we’re…you know…I just want to crawl out of my skin,” he continued, “I just want everything to stop, and I…I’m so disgusted with myself Clint! I hate myself, and I hate him even though I don’t, and I just…I just can’t escape what I thought I knew my whole life!”…_

And the scene changed again, this time to something he recognized, his own apartment, his own kitchen table as they watched Clint through the Lengesett.

_“Sshe never loved me,” he moaned pathetically drunk. “I think she hates us now…I mean…she’ssssuch a bitch sometimes and…and she makesssSofia cry, and sometimes I wisshhe would just go away forever…”_

Scenes and emotions flew by him at high speed, imprinting themselves upon his consciousness for later perusal. Almost everything he needed was here. It was too perfect. She was handing him exactly the information that he needed, and yet she slumbered on obliviously.

She had no idea that she had just given the perfect ammunition to use against the Avengers: their personal lives.

As his plans solidified into a resolve of steel, he slowly got up leaving the sleeping woman behind on the floor. He was ready. Now the fun would really begin.

As he dressed himself, once again adorned in the Asgardian clothes he had not touched since his last defeat, he smirked. Waving his hand over Natasha’s prone body he placed an enchantment upon her that would force her to sleep for another few hours. When she woke up it would be to a new world, one where her friends loathed her and he ruled as was his right.

As he passed through the doors of the shoddy apartment, he took one last look at her sleeping face. She was, he supposed, quite beautiful for a Midgardian woman.  
He then turned away his smile growing a little wider. _Beautiful things_ , he thought, _were always the most fun to break_. With that in mind, he passed from the apartment and headed in the direction of the Avengers Tower.

Loki was back, and he had learned from his mistakes before. He would not be defeated this time. Nothing in the world would stop him now from achieving his ultimate goal.

In just a few short hours, the world would be his.


	15. Chapter 15

The waters of the lengesett rippled as Loki dropped the small pebble into the bowl. It was a composite rock, specially made from rocks from thirteen different countries on Earth, the homelands of the thirty-six different people he had recruited, blackmailed, or otherwise persuaded to join his cause over the last few years. They would be his new army, one far more effective than the last one.

Of the people he’d hired, twenty were highly trained assassins and mercenaries; twelve were so-called “super villains” he’d either helped escape from prison, or stopped from carrying out ineffective plans in lieu of assisting with his; two were power-hungry generals in the United States’ army to whom he’d offered hefty sums of money and control of small countries; one was a disgraced ex-chemist, an expert on chemical sedatives; and one was a highly renown physicist who was capable of building and operating cells that would soon contain each of the Avengers and their formidable powers. Altogether they formed Loki’s army, the one with which he would soon rule the realm of Midgard.

As the pebble sunk to the bottom of the bowl, a small pulse was sent out to each of these individuals. They would feel it no matter where in the world they were thanks to a spell Loki had developed especially for this purpose. And they would come, or else risk their own safety. The time had come. It was time to take down the remaining five Avengers.

***

Steve Rogers was asleep when the group of assassins invaded his bedroom. One moment he’d been asleep, dreaming that he was on a stage again with the chorus girls from back during the war, only this time without any clothes on, and the next he was being pulled roughly from his bed, beaten, and pinned to the floor, staring down the barrel of a gun that was only millimeters from his eye socket. Before he even had the time to say “Star Spangled Man” the men had knocked him out cold with a single blow from the butt of the weapon to his left temple.

Steve dropped like a ton of bricks to the floor, released from the men’s hold.

Their leader, an ugly man with crooked teeth and an Australian accent pulled a radio from his hip. “Team A reporting,” he said. “Success.”

***

Bruce Banner was a man of habit. Every morning he woke up at precisely 6:15. He would read in bed for about an hour, then get up, dress, and make himself a cup of black coffee. He would return to his rooms no later than eight o’clock where he would spend the next six to ten hours in his lab, occasionally accompanied by Tony, alternating between experiments and reading. He’d then go up to the roof, meditate in the greenhouse for around an hour, then do some yoga. Then it was dinnertime after which he typically took a stroll through central park. Head home and repeat every day.

He found that a solid routine tended to make the other guy stay away. He could keep him under control when he knew what to expect, when he could predict and prepare for his daily life.

As any good security agent or spy would tell you though, routine makes you predictable, and being predictable makes you an easy target. His routine, and a certain serum which he was currently developing, would be the instruments of fate that would lead to his downfall.

The assassins struck in the midst of his yoga routine. He was midway through the transition between his “cobra” pose and into “downward facing dog” when the trio of masked figures fell upon him, knocking him off balance and into the hard floor. His body began to quiver, his skin turning a sickly green color, but before the transformation could really begin he felt a sharp needle stab into the side of his neck, dropping his vitals to almost deadly levels, and sending him reeling into darkness.

The assassins relaxed their hold on Banner, one of them removing the black mask that covered her face. She was a pale brunette, not overly attractive, but not noticeable ugly either. The kind of woman that could blend in easily to a crowd, one who could slip a knife between your ribs in broad daylight, then vanish just as quickly into the panicked crowd of people. She was one of the most dangerous women on the planet, and the only one that Loki would have trusted to take down the Hulk quickly and effectively.

She pulled a radio from her pocket and spoke quickly into it with a voice that carried only the barest hint of an Italian accent. She was not as a matter of fact, Italian, but given the nature of this mission, should it go awry, she was prepared to vanish, leaving SHIELD chasing after a fictitious person.

“Team B reporting,” she said, “The big man is down and out.”

***

Tony knew he was no role model. Any self-respecting parent would do well to keep their impressionable offspring as far away as possible from him. He drank, he swore, he womanized (okay well not recently, not since his attentions had been consumed by the world’s fittest ninety-plus year-old, but still…), and he was known for making breathtakingly stupid decisions on a daily basis. Needless to say he didn’t exactly have parents lining up to ask him to babysit.

Just one.

Clint had been in a bad way when he’d shown up in Tony’s lab, wild eyed and bordering on hysterical. The man looked as though he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and Tony would know what that looked like. He’d personally caused them in two assistants prior to Pepper.

Which was why he hadn’t argued when Clint had handed over Sofia to be watched and took off to do God knows what, probably heading to the roof to shoot the beer cans out of the hands of homeless men thirty stories below, or whatever the hell the guy did to unwind. Just so long as he doesn’t end up in my air ducts again, Tony thought to himself. Clint had scared the living shit out of Steve and him in the middle of their “fonduing” last month when he’d positioned himself in the vent just above their bed and blasted “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye. Which wouldn’t have been so terrible had he not started singing along, embarrassing Steve so thoroughly that he’d turned bright red, clammed up, and refused to continue, leaving Tony with a burning desire to exact revenge on Clint in the most inventive ways he could think of.

Tony gave his head a small shake, turning his thoughts back to the tiny redheaded girl that was sleeping against his chest, one hand over the arc reactor, the other planted between her lips as she breathed heavily through her nose. Poor kid, Tony thought. He knew what it was like to bear witness to the kind of fighting between parents that Sofia had. Howard and Maria Stark had never exactly held back their frustrations just because Tony was around either.

He relaxed a little further into the pillowed back of his armchair as he browsed through SHIELD’s database. He felt strangely relaxed around the little girl, perhaps just because he didn’t want to wake her after the night she’d just had.

Which was why he barely had time to put up a fight when the assassins that had somehow managed to bypass his security system, poured into the room and took him down. He barely had time to reach for the button that would call the suit, JARVIS, and the rest of the Avengers to his assistance when something hard and heavy slammed into the back of his head, stunning him long enough for the needle they’d stabbed him with to deposit the tranquilizer into his blood stream and allow it to take effect.

It was over in a matter of seconds. As Tony’s vision faded to black around him, he realized with a horror that the man who seemed to be the leader picked up a screaming Sofia from the floor and handed her off to another.

“No!” he choked, “Don’t touch-” he was cut off by a swift kick to the stomach by the leader. The loss of breath combined with the heavy tranquilizer caused him to slump over, unconscious on the hardwood floors.

“Team C,” the leader, a short Chinese man said into his radio, “Stark has been taken down…and we’ve got the kid too.”

***

They did not send a team to take Clint down, though that had originally been the plan. As it turned out, they did not need to.

Clint was sitting on the roof watching the world go by on the streets below him when he heard the noises of the other Avengers being attacked. He’d sprung to his feet and raced downstairs, but not quickly enough to prevent what happened. The teams were in and out so fast, taking the Avengers with them, that he had no chance to do anything. It wasn’t until he realized that Sofia was gone too that the panic truly set in.

When he rushed into Tony’s part of the tower he came face to face with a parent’s worst nightmare. The place was absolutely trashed, furniture overturned, and fragments of inventions lying shattered everywhere. Dummy the robot was in a panic, rolling frantically about the room and jabbering on in a series of beeps, trying to tell Clint what had happened, but he wasn’t paying attention. The only thing he could focus on, the only thing that mattered right now lay in the middle of the floor. It was Sofia’s beluga Sandi, the stitching torn, the stuffing ripped out, and the ground splattered with flecks of blood. Beside it was a note:

_If you want your daughter to live_   
_Come to the old SHIELD tower._   
_DO NOT COME ARMED._   
_If you do, or if you attempt to bring anyone with you,_   
_Her body will hang from Hydra’s flagpole_

Clint couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t let those bastards hurt his daughter. He would sooner die.

Perhaps the old Clint, perhaps Hawkeye would have been able to find a way around this, but the new Clint couldn’t. He’d been on rescue missions of sorts before, but never one where the cost was so high. Whenever SHIELD had sent him to retrieve somebody, the person was always just an asset or a target. If things went south and the asset died, well, that was just part of the business. Fury would be upset, Coulson would gripe about the paperwork, but Clint could generally walk away okay.

Not this time though. This time it wasn’t just an asset that needed rescuing. It was Sofia, his daughter, his flesh and blood offspring. It was the only thing he had worth living for anymore. This time the cost was just too high.

He couldn’t risk it.

Leaving the bow and his arrows behind, Clint walked out the front door, apprehension weighing in every step and headed down the street to the old Barber shop that had once been SHIELD’s face for a headquarters. Whatever happened to him, Sofia would survive. Somehow, he would save her.

Nothing else mattered.

***

As well planned as Loki’s scheme was, not everything could be accounted for. There would always be unforeseen variables that could not be accounted for. In this case the variable was Thor, or more specifically, his love of Midgardian technology.

In his time on Earth, Thor had been introduced to many amazing inventions that were unavailable on Asgard. Jane of course, had shown him some amazing things, fantastic machines that gathered scientific data, analyzed the very foundations of the universe, and put it all together in the form of numbers and letters that only she seemed to be able to read. Thor had learned more about science in a few years with her than he’d ever thought possible, but what really caught his fancy were the little pieces of tech that most took for granted.

In this particular case, it was Tony’s voice activated blender.

On the night when Loki’s people stormed the Avengers tower, Thor was not in his room as they had anticipated. Rather, he was twelve floors below, sitting in the kitchen, and trying to determine exactly what he could do to please the small angry cup that kept chewing up all the pieces of food and drink he put into it. He was clearly under the impression that the blender would not perform this service for him if he did not acknowledge its perseverance and bravery every time it was used, and since he wanted to know if it could crush absolutely everything if you put it inside, he had to keep giving it a kind of pep talk.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

It ground up a combination of ice, dishwasher soap pellets, and a whole apple.

“WELL DONE FRIEND BLENDER, YOU SHOW EXEMPLARY SKILL IN THIS-“

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Some tinfoil, a Dodgers’ baseball cap and Steve’s StarkPhone met a sparking end at the hands of the tiny blades.

“MOST IMPRESSIVE. GOOD BLENDER I MUST-“

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

And so on.

Thor probably would have continued his explorations of the blender had the assassins assigned to him, confused and slightly panicky at his absence from his room not picked that exact moment to wander into the kitchen in search of him.

They attempted to attack in some kind of formation, but the element of surprise was lost. They all knew that no mortal stood a chance against the god of thunder without some kind of surprise, but they had no choice. They attacked.

Thor made short work of them. Though he had not been expecting company, Mjolnir was never far from him and within a matter of minutes the mercenaries were lying dead, stunned, or injured on the kitchen tile. Enraged, Thor took off. He had to warn the other Avengers.

Unfortunately by this time he was too late to help anyone. Each Avenger had been effectively taken down and kidnapped.

Thor was the last free Avenger…he was completely on his own.


	16. Chapter 16

When Tony came to he was lying on his back on the hard floor of an empty cement room. His entire body hurt, throbbing with every small motion he made. Lying very still, he took careful stock of his physical condition. His legs were stiff, but seemed to be okay. His torso was more painful to move, and he could feel the places where the attackers had struck him. He was sure there would be bruises, and likely big ones at that eventually, but at least he didn’t have any broken ribs. That was good at least; Tony absolutely hated waiting for ribs to heal.

His arms were both fine, no injuries to report, but his head was a different matter. He slowly tried to raise himself up from the uncomfortable horizontal position and his entire skull throbbed in protest. His stomach lurched, his vision blurred, and he carefully lowered himself back down. A concussion, clearly, which made sense considering how hard the bastards had hit him.

His physical inventory taken, he rested for a moment trying to piece together exactly what had happened. He remembered figures clothed in black attacking him at home, but not much else. How had they bypassed JARVIS? The AI was usually very stringent with its security measures. It didn’t make sense that these seemingly ordinary hit men had managed to get in without Tony being alerted.

Having lain down for a while now Tony slowly sat up, his entire body protesting the action. It was then that he saw Steve.

The soldier was shackled and gagged, bolted to the wall across from Tony. He looked absolutely terrible, his ankles and wrists rubbed raw from where he had fought to break free of his restraints. His right wrist looked especially bad. The skin had broken and blood trickled down his hand. His face sported a myriad of bruises and cuts, from where the hit men had struck him, and he overall bore the haggard look of one who has undergone severe amounts of pain very recently. His eyes were wide, and seemed unnaturally blue against his bruised and bloodied flesh, and bore into his boyfriend’s, pleading with him.

Tony thought his heart might have stopped beating if the arc reactor would have permitted it to.

Caring very little for the pain that pulsed through his head as a result, he scrambled over to the chained man, and removed the gag with fumbling fingers. “My God Steve,” he choked, his voice raspy from thirst and lack of use, “What the hell is going on?”

Steve flexed his jaw tightly. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just…one minute I was asleep and then…” he trailed off. “How did they get in? I thought you said JARVIS was the best security in the world? What the hell happened Tony?” He was clearly upset, but Tony supposed he had the right to be given their current state.

“I don’t…I don’t know,” he said lamely, “I just…are you okay?” he asked.

Steve just looked at him. “No I am not okay,” he snapped. “You were supposed to make sure this didn’t happen! This was your job!”

Tony recoiled with shock. This was so unlike Steve that it threw him. For once, Tony Stark, the man who always needed the last word, didn’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry,” he said miserably. His head hurt, his body ached, and he couldn’t think straight, and he was locked up in a strange place and Steve was upset with him. But he could figure out a solution…he had to. He was Tony Motherfucking Stark dammit, genius billionaire playboy (well maybe not so much that any more) philanthropist, and there was no way he wouldn’t be able to figure out a solution here.

He just needed a minute to collect himself first.

Moving against Steve, he rested his head on his shoulder and closed his eyes, breathing in the familiar smell of his boyfriend.

Steve tensed up uncomfortably.

Tony ignored this, and continued to breathe deeply. This was already making him feel better, more relaxed, more at—

“Can you please not do that?” Steve’s strained voice cut into his thoughts.

Tony’s eyes opened and he looked up. “Do what?” he asked.

“Never mind, just…just please don’t…” Steve mumbled, trailing off.

“Don’t what?” Tony said, his voice growing tenser. Steve always completed his sentences and thoughts; it was one of his many perfect all-American boy traits. Perfect grammar, perfect manners, perfect in every social respect. “Steve, how can I stop what I don’t know I’m—”

“Just please don’t touch me, okay!” Steve snapped suddenly. He seemed to become embarrassed by his outburst almost immediately and looked away again.

Confused, and a little hurt, Tony moved away. Fine, he thought to himself, maybe he just needs his space or something. Tony was actually quite proud that he’d come to this conclusion. Normally he’d have just been pissed. _Look Pepper_ , he thought to himself, _I can be considerate too_. He’d have to tell her about this when they were home. Maybe then she’d stop making him watch all these self-help relationship films on his days off.

Now a few feet away from Steve, Tony went back to thinking. He had just come to the conclusion that they were underground, judging by the room temperature, air pressure, and lack of windows when the Captain interrupted his thought process again, this time with a simple question that made his blood run cold.

“Where’s Sofia?”

For the first time Tony remembered that it was he who was in charge of the little girl, that he was the one babysitting her at the time of the attacks.

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitsfuckingshitshitshitshitshit.

“I…I don’t know,” he admitted, looking frantically about the room as though he expected to find her hiding underneath a non-existent piece of furniture. “Oh God Steve, what the hell happened to her? Barton’s going to kill me and Natasha will kick my ass! We have to find her, we—” Tony continued his frantic monologue as he paced the room finally coming to a stop in front of the bound man.

“Look I need you to remember Steve,” he said placing his hands on either side of his boyfriend’s head, “Anything, anything at all from when they brought you here.

Building plans, landmarks, temperatures, anything!” he needed data, something he could use to form an escape plan, anything he could use to find Sofia.

So wrapped up in this was he that he missed the look that flashed across Steve’s eyes. “I said don’t touch me!” he interrupted harshly.

Well that used up pretty much all of Tony’s patience right there. “What the hell is your problem?” he snapped angrily, “We are locked up somewhere underground, have no idea where anyone else is, a missing girl on our hands, and you are having a fucking hissy fit because I touched you?”

“Tony don’t—” he began.

“No!” Tony retorted, “You clearly have something more important on your mind than the present situation, so just spit it out already! What the hell is going on with you?”

“Tony I can’t do this anymore!” Steve spat. “I can’t deal with this, with you, with us!”

Stark froze, confused. “Where is this coming from?” he asked, “and why am I hearing it now?”

“Because it’s only clear to me now,” the soldier whispered. “I only knew when they brought you in unconscious.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Tony said, a lump in his throat. There was no way this was happening. “Why would me being unconscious make you decide that we have to…that this…” he couldn’t finish the sentence.

Steve looked him straight in the eyes, miserably. “Because I saw them bring you in, and…and I felt nothing. I didn’t care.”

Tony felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach. “No,” he said, “That doesn’t make any sense. You said…you told me you…” He would not cry. He would not cry…

“I could never love you Tony,” said Steve, and though his voice was gentle, it hit Tony like a steamroller. “What we had…it’s not God’s way. I was lying to myself, can’t you understand? We were both sinning, and I just…I just can’t do it anymore.” His blue eyes were swimming in tears. “I mean, you’re very important to me,” he continued, choking slightly, “but I realize now that we can only be friends. We can’t keep doing what we were…we can’t keep doing such a disgusting…such a sickening thing.”

“Oh so now I sicken you!” Tony snapped, his voice cracking. “I was just a…a sin?”

“I didn’t say that you sicken me,” Steve protested, “Just that—”

“Oh no, I understand perfectly,” Tony said furiously.

“You do?” the super soldier asked, with a hint of hope in his eyes.

Tony looked back at him, and a little bit of him died. “Fuck you Steve Rogers,” he said flatly.

“Tony, I—”

There was a banging sound and a commotion outside the metal doors. One opened and two men and a woman entered. “Time to go for a walk Captain,” the woman said smiling coldly, “Our leader would really love to have a chat.”

“No wait,” Steve said, protesting and struggling as the two men unchained him. He was very weak though, even the serum not being able to do anything about his battered body. “Tony please…” he said, turning to his ex-boyfriend as the men dragged him from the room.

It occurred to Tony that he was unbound; with nothing really to stop him from trying to help the man he loved. Hell, the two of them probably were capable of taking on the enemies, even if they were both weakened.

It occurred to him, but instead he chose to watch as Captain America was dragged from the room, still struggling as the metal door slammed shut behind him.

Then he fell apart.

He should have known. Should have known that Steve’s nineteen-thirties upbringing would make him abhor the thought of a gay relationship. Should have known that nobody in his or her right mind would ever actually love him. Should have known that it couldn’t last. Should have remembered that love only ever ended in heartbreak where you felt like someone had cut you open and removed everything important. He should have known.

How could he have been so stupid? So stupid to think that someone as beautiful and wonderful as Steve could find him, the damaged billionaire, worth loving. Hell, his own father hadn’t given two shits about him, so why would anyone else?

Tony cried. For the first time since he was eight years old, he curled up into a ball and sobbed, loud, aching sobs that echoed in the empty room around him. When he was finished, he lay very still on his side, his face pressed into the bitingly cold concrete, vowing to never again let anyone come close to him. Swearing that never again would Anthony Stark be so stupid, so naïve, and so delusional to believe that love was possible for someone as broken as him.

***

Out in the hallway, the two men stepped back from the bloodied form of Captain America, taking the wrist and ankle cuffs with them. A flood of golden light seemed to pour out from every orifice of the man’s body, as he grew slightly taller, thinner, and more angular. Within minutes, there was no sign of Steve Rogers anywhere in that hallway. Instead, standing where he’d once been was a tall, dark-haired demigod. Loki smiled, and turned to the woman who’d accompanied the two other men.  
“I do believe that was rather successful,” he said calmly, “Who is next?”


	17. Chapter 17

Steve felt like he was going to throw up. Even with the super soldier serum and its expedited healing capabilities he still had a very large and very tender lump on his head from where the barrel of the gun had struck him. He could feel the swelling against the burlap fabric of the bag that whoever had captured him had seen fit to place over his head.

How long had he been here? It was impossible to tell with the sack on his head, but it felt like it had been a while. Or maybe that was just his body aching from being beaten, then chained and bound by the person that had put him here, wherever here was. He flexed his muscles against the binding chains experimentally. There was a surprising amount of give to them. Maybe he could free himself if he just…

SNAP.

The chains around his arms broke astonishingly easily after just a few minutes of straining against them. His hands now free, Steve yanked the burlap sack from his face, reveling in the absence of the smell and uncomfortable humidity inside.

He was sitting in a white room, padded on its floor and three of the four walls. The only bare wall was the one that contained a door. High on the wall to Steve’s left there was an air vent of some kind. A small pot-light was located on the ceiling in the center of the room, which provided the only light source, but it took a moment for Steve to register any of this because his full attention was focused on the man lying lifelessly on the ground against the wall opposite him.

Bruce Banner.

“Bruce? Where are we? Are you okay?” he called to the prone man.

There was no reply.

Reaching down, Steve broke the chains off his legs and stood up. Almost immediately he felt the bile rising in his throat and quickly sat down again, taking a moment before crawling slowly over to his teammate’s body and turning it on to its side. “Bruce?” he called, giving the man a little shake.

Banner woke slowly, having to fight hard to stave off the sleep that threatened to reclaim him. His first attempt at speech went something along the lines of “Nnnnnnnneeeeerrggguuuhhhh.”

Steve waited impatiently until the scientist was awake enough to comprehend his questions, until he’d hauled himself up into a seated position against the padded wall. “Where are we?” he asked the Captain, “What happened?”

Steve just shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “They got me while I was asleep,”

Bruce mumbled something unintelligible about a serum, his eyes drifting shut again. It was pretty clear, even to Steve that he was drugged. He gave him another shake.

The smaller man shook his head trying to clear his thoughts, when he seemed to be hit by an abrupt realization, “Where…what happened to Tony?”

Steve’s insides turned into ice. How could he have forgotten about Tony? “I don’t know,” he admitted.

Bruce mumbled something again, gesturing vaguely towards his pants pocket.

“What?” Steve asked him, leaning closer.

“Phone,” Bruce mumbled, “Try text Tony…”

Steve reached disbelievingly into Bruce’s pocket and so his surprise pulled out a tiny cellular phone. How had the kidnappers managed to miss that? Surely they had been searched before they were imprisoned this way?

Steve was hardly going to complain though, and opened it, accessing the contacts list after only four failed attempts that had landed him on the internet, something called an mp3 player, and twice in Banner’s personal calendar.

Scrolling through the names, past his own (now that he thought of it, he hadn’t seen his phone in quite some time, where had it gone?) until he got to his boyfriend’s name. He touched the screen, and his jaw dropped in surprise.

As Tony’s contact information came up, so did the picture Bruce had assigned to him. In it, Steve’s boyfriend was shirtless, leaning back against a lab counter, his smile wide, and the ghost of a laugh on his face.

Steve felt a little animal of jealousy stir in his chest. Even though he knew that it was entirely possible that Tony was just too hot in the lab that day, he still felt a little irritated that Tony looked so pleased in what was obviously Bruce’s presence. He wanted to be the only one to make Tony smile like that.

 _Not really the time_ , he thought to himself. Jealousy could come later when Tony was safe and back with him. He would ignore it right now.

Or so he thought, until he clicked on the little texting icon to send a message and came face to face with the last few hundred messages sent between Tony and Bruce.

He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.

These were not just innocent text messages. In fact they were anything but. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them, some with pictures, all of them the sort that said things that Steve didn’t think he’d ever be able to say to anyone, let alone somebody that was just a friend like Tony had always claimed he and Bruce were.

He felt sick.

It was quite clear that Bruce and Tony were not “just friends”. Not by a long shot.

He supposed he should have seen it coming; after all, didn’t someone as brilliant as Tony have a lot more in common with another genius such as Bruce Banner? Did they not share that kind of special bond that Tony had always claimed came from a shared passion?

He knew what that could feel like. He’s once had that with Peggy.

Fighting off tears, Steve placed the phone face down on the ground and turned to look at Bruce. The man was asleep again; blissfully unaware of the pain he’d just caused Steve.

Schooling his features into a mask of calm disparagement, Steve reached a remarkably steady hand out to him, and shook him awake none to gently.

Bruce seemed to wake up, more clear-headed than before. “Steve?” he asked, what’s going on? Where are we?”

Steve felt the tension rising within him, welling up from the jealous animal inside that was telling him to strike, to hurt, to kill…“How long?” he asked, his voice very dry.

“What?” Bruce asked. He looked genuinely confused.

“How long?” Steve growled. He shoved the phone at Bruce, his willpower barely keeping hold of the monster that threatened to break loose, to tear Bruce Banner limb from limb, to destroy everything and everyone.”

Bruce’s face fell flat, a mask of impassivity. “About six months,” he admitted.

Steve nodded dumbly, barely aware of any of his surroundings. His whole body was screaming, a part of him wanting to hurt the man before him, to cause him pain; another part curling up into a teary-eyed ball where it sobbed ‘no no no no no no no no no no,” over and over again.

“I’m sorry Steve,” Bruce whispered, placing his hand on the other man’s arm. “I just couldn’t help myself. He came on to me one night in the lab and—”

“Stop,” Steve said suddenly, feeling sick to his stomach. _Tony came on to him_ , the voice in his head whispered, _Tony wasn’t satisfied with you. How could he be? How could he ever be happy with someone as dumb and old as you? A sinner like you? A stupid kid from Brooklyn like you?_

Banner was still talking, “…I mean I tried Steve, I really did, but when Tony wants something, he gets it, and he doesn’t play fair…well, I mean, you know, you’ve slept with him too…”

 _You were nothing to him_ , the voice continued, _Just an easy lay. He didn’t care. You loved him and he didn’t care at all…_

Steve was not consciously aware of making the decision to punch Bruce. It therefore surprised him just as much as Banner when he felt the searing pain in his knuckles when they collided with the other man’s face, knocking him backwards and unconscious into a wall.

An alarm went off and the single pot light started flashing, and a number of black clothed men and women rushed in to subdue the super soldier and the scientist before it got out of hand or Banner hulked out and hurt somebody. Steve didn’t fight the hands that restrained him and injected him with something that made it hard for him to move. He didn’t protest when some of the people hauled Banner up and out the door. He didn’t care anymore. Nothing was important.

When they left with the unconscious scientist Steve curled up into a ball and sobbed, heavy dry sobs that racked his entire body. He’d lost another love, another person he’d thought was his soul mate.

Steve hated Tony. He hated Bruce. He hated Howard Stark for creating him, and for having Tony. He hated Clint and Natasha, who’d finally been the ones to force him and Tony out on their first date.

Most of all he hated himself. For not being good enough, for not dying in that plane crash, for not having the good sense to stay unconscious forever, for not being young enough, smart enough…not being enough to keep the one thing in this whole world that he valued close to him. For driving Tony into Bruce’s arms. For everything.

Steve cried until the drug they’d injected him with claimed him with its sleep, and he fell into fitful nightmares.

He didn’t care about anything anymore. Not the world, not its citizens, nothing. He wished he could just stay asleep forever.

xxx

The people clothed in black carried Bruce Banner out of the door and into the hallway where Steve was visible through the one-way glass. It was there that he transformed back into his usual form.

Loki smiled, his face so close to the mirrored glass that he could see his surreally white teeth reflected in it. “It’s just too easy,” he said quietly, before turning back to his assistant, the woman with the fake Italian accent. “Has Barton arrived yet?” he asked her.

“Yes sir,” she replied emotionlessly. “He surrendered about five minutes ago.”

“Put him in his cell,” Loki ordered. “I will deal with him later.”

The assistant nodded and moved to direct some of her subordinates.

Loki moved down the hallway towards the last full cell on the left, wherein lay the real Bruce Banner; hooked by IV to a steady flow of the serum he’d designed.

Loki closed his eyes and transformed again…


	18. Chapter 18

Bruce Banner had never been a religious man. From the moment he was born up until now, he had been a student of science, a worshipper at the altar of knowledge. He did not believe in any kind of higher deity; for what kind of God would give him an abusive and murderous father, a dead mother, a childhood spent victimized by bullies, and then turn him into a monster on top of all that?

This was why it was so surprising when he found himself begging God of all people to make it stop, to just kill him already, as he curled up into the fetal position on the cold plastic bench situated the room, his body riddled with stabs of pain and uncontrollable shakes, his skin glistening with a sheen of sweat, and his stomach churning, causing him to dry heave every few minutes (it having already purged any and all food from his stomach).

He had never been in so much pain in his life, and that said a lot.

It seemed to go on for years, every second an eternity. He was forever caught in a kind of limbo, some space between sleep and wakefulness, only dimply aware of the shapes and sounds that penetrated his mind, flashes of color, memories, glimpses of the room around him, but filled with people that didn’t belong there…

_“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”_

_He was six years old again, just trying to catch a glimpse of his father’s work papers. He’d been curious, having recently read in the papers about a break-through in nuclear physics done by the people his father had worked with before he was born._

_“Were you snooping you little sonovabitch?” Bruce’s father Brian Banner hisses, grabbing ahold of his son’s shirt collar. He picks the struggling boy up and holds him at eye level, his feet dangling helplessly as Brian screams in his face. He can smell the alcohol on his breath._

_He throws Bruce against the wall and laughs as he falls to the ground crying. “You’re nothing,” he tells him, “Just a freak of nature”…_

Then a new scene, a new memory… _The biting cold of the night air against his skin. “Hurry Brucey,” his mother whispers to him as they hurriedly pack up the car in the dead of night. They’re finally leaving, finally escaping Brian Banner when…_

_“REBECCA!”_

_Brian Banner has awoken, drawn by the sounds of them leaving, despite their best efforts to muffle them._

_“DON’T YOU DARE! YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!”_

_Brian has reached Rebecca and Bruce, and grabs ahold of her by her arms and dress and slaps her. Bruce is crying. He’s scared._

_Brian slaps her. “YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!” he screams at her, grabbing her around her neck. “You’re staying right here.” He throws her to the pavement, but is silenced by the loud cracking sound of her head hitting the concrete. She is dead in only seconds and Bruce can feel his world crumbling around him as the blood spreads out beneath her body, and Brian turns towards him with madness in his eyes…_

_“Bruce…”_

And another change, this time to an unfamiliar white room that seems to be made of plastic. _Where is he? A familiar face is sitting by his bed. It’s Tony. He must be dreaming since he doesn’t know where he is, so he reaches out to him. Maybe in this dream he can have what he’ll never have in real life._

_“Tony, please…”_

_Tony reaches back to him and takes his hand, kissing him lightly._

_“I love you Tony…” Forget about Steve, forget everything, be with me, love me…_

_“Bruce, I…”_

_The kiss deepens but then-_

A sharp pain forces his eyes open. His jaw hurts like crazy and…and Tony is sitting across from him, hands bound by rope, bruised and battered and looking disgusted by the very sight of Bruce Banner, sitting confused and in pain upon a dingy cot.

_What had he just done?_

“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Tony snaps half-hysterically.

“Tony I-“

“You love me? I’m with Steve! How could you…why would you even think...?”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce whimpers. He is going to throw up. He just basically threw himself at Tony Stark, and the drug, whatever it is, is making him sick.

“Listen to me right now,” Tony said, still glaring at Bruce with a mixture of anger and disgust, “I do not love you, I will never love you. You are a monster, and you make me sick. We will never mention this again.”

Bruce nodded dumbly. This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, this isn’t… “I’m…” he begins, but stopped when he felt the vomit coming and doubled over again dry heaving.

He doesn’t even register when strangers come and remove Tony from the room, barely looks up when one of them presses a little lever that sends more of the serum into his system, carrying him back off into a world of horrible memories. Bruce Banner has left the metaphorical building, so lost in his own humiliation. There was no point anymore. He’d thrown himself catastrophically at Tony and been shot down. Stark clearly hated him now, and he didn’t blame him. He hated himself too.

xxx

Loki transformed back into himself just outside the door as before. He was a little bit irritated, truth be told. Though he’d been successful in his objective with Banner, he hadn’t counted on the level of damage the drug was doing. He hadn’t got to play out his entire interpretation of Tony Stark. He hadn’t really even got to play Tony Stark, so drug addled was the genius.

“Sir, Clint Barton is waiting for you,” an aide said to him, pointing down the hall to where they had built a cell for the former Hawkeye to face him in.

Pushing aside his disappointment with Banner, Loki schooled his grin into an easy smile. This was the part he had been looking forward to the most.

It was time for the final charges to be laid in his plan to destroy the Avengers. There was just one last stick of dynamite to be added, and her name was Natasha Romanov. She would be the one that inadvertently brought about the explosion that would destroy everything and everyone that Loki had hated for the entirety of the last few years.


	19. Chapter 19

Clint Barton was a man used to action. When he was a child growing up in the circus, he had been constantly surrounded by stimuli; loud music, the sounds of the animals and performers…there was forever something to do, always a stunt to perform, a new target to shoot, or an animal to chase. As a SHIELD agent, his missions had been filled with action, shoot-outs, running, leaping, and plenty of excitement, enough to get even his adrenaline pumping.

It was in his nature to always be moving, always looking forward. Which was why he was losing his mind right now. Loki was keeping him waiting, and waiting to see his daughter at that. Clint Barton was a man of action, and if somebody didn’t hand his daughter over completely unharmed in the next five seconds he was going to do something about it.

And these kidnappers would not come out of that in one piece.

They’d be lucky if they came out alive.

Body tense, he surveyed the room for the umpteenth time since his arrival at the old SHIELD base, a building that had long since been abandoned. To be honest, Clint was surprised that it was still standing. One of Fury’s favourite parts of any kind of SHIELD operation was demolition time. Clint had once suggested to Coulson that he liked it because he was used to smashing his underlings’ self-confidence, and knocking down a building made a more impressive noise.

The room was small and Spartan in its decoration, containing only a table, two benches, and a minimalistic light fixture. The floors were of faded green tile, and the walls were an off-white colour, the plaster cracking in places.

Clint was currently alternating between sitting on one of the uncomfortable benches, and pacing the room erratically. To an outside observer it would seem this was from nerves. In fact, he was judging distances, measuring the weaknesses of the room, and devising possible escape plans for rescuing Sofia. It had been a long time since he’d been an agent, but you never lost the instinct.

The door of the room opened and a young woman entered grabbing Clint’s attention. She herself was unremarkable, but clinging to her hand was a small redheaded girl.

“Sofia!”

“Daddy!”

The little girl dropped the woman’s hand and rushed to her father, nearly leaping into his arms. He lifted her up, taking a great sigh of relief as she buried her face in his shoulder. She seemed to be physically all right.

Clint turned to face the woman who had brought the little girl in only to discover she was gone. Unsettled, he loosened his grip on the little girl currently babbling into his shoulder about “bad guys that huwt Unca Tony”. “Sofia,” he said as calmly as he could, “We’re going to go home soon, but I need you to be quiet okay? Everything is going to be fine, but you need to be sneaky alright?” _God, how do you make a kid that small understand that?_

The little girl looked up into her father’s eyes with her big blue teary ones and nodded. Clint hoped she had actually understood.

Tucking his daughter closer to him Clint began to formulate his plan. The door would most certainly be guarded, and he had no weapon. Plus there was no way he would put Sofia in the middle of a shootout of any kind, so breaking out that way was out. The ceiling was made up of a very thin tile, so maybe if he could get them through by a wall he could…

“I wouldn’t bother,” a voice said from near the doorway.

Clint whirled around and came face-to-face with the very man who only a few years ago had invaded his mind and taken over everything he had thought he knew about himself. The man, who had manipulated him as a puppet, forced him to kill members of his own organization, and attempt to kill his teammates. The man who he, without a doubt, hated more than any other person, alien, or other sentient being in the entire universe.

“ Loki.”

This didn’t make sense. How had Thor’s evil younger brother managed to return to Earth without anyone knowing? He was supposed to be back in whatever the hell kind of prison Thor and his father were supposed to have designed to contain him. Why hadn’t they known he was back at all?

“It has been a long time, Agent Barton,” the demigod said smiling broadly.

Clint’s had instantly flew to where his bow and quiver usually resided. They weren’t there. Of course, he’d left them at home as ordered.

“Oh now let’s have none of that,” Loki said, seating himself at the table. He gestured to the empty seat.

Clint sat.

“Hello again Ms. Sofia,” Loki said to the small girl with a nod.

The little girl waved shyly, recognizing only the nice man who had given her ice cream.

“How the hell do you know my kid?” Clint snapped.

Loki grinned, “Oh Miss Romanov has been a very naughty girl lately,” he watched as Clint Barton’s eyes widened with shock, then confusion. “I think we have some catching up to do, Agent Barton,” he said slyly.

He couldn’t wait to watch the man’s whole world crumble.

xxx

“You’re lying,” the man before him said determinedly.

“Am I?” the demigod said carelessly. “Then I suppose these are lies as well.” Supressing a grin, he drew from within his coat a small stack of photos. “I do like to maintain a certain degree of security,” he said easily, “and isn’t it funny what sometimes comes up on those cameras?”

Clint looked at the photos, his heart sinking into his stomach like a rock. Here there were photos of Natasha laughing with Loki, walking with Loki. Multiple shots from an apartment security tape of her in an apartment alone with him…two different dates according to the timestamps, a photo of her and Sofia with him eating ice cream, her head resting on Loki’s shoulder…

Clint flipped through them all, the images all blurring together as he fought against the knot of anger and humiliation that burned within him. The final image he stared at for a long time, a war of emotions burning inside of him. It was a somewhat blurry image, probably taken on a cellphone in a darkened room, but the person in it was unmistakable, especially to Clint.

Up until this point, every one of the photographs could have been explained away by friendship, or something of the kind. Perhaps Natasha had somehow become friends with Loki while she and Clint were having their problems. He didn’t like the idea, but he supposed in time he could forgive it.

This photo clearly destroyed that theory.

In the image Natasha lay bare-skinned against the fabric of what appeared to be a couch. Her hair was rumpled, and her cheek pressed against the bare chest of the man who was taking the picture, holding the camera above him. Though the image contained only the lower portion of a face it was obvious that the person was Loki.

A blanket made a poor attempt at covering them, but most of both of their skin was exposed and obviously naked.

There was no way to explain away this one. Natasha had cheated on him with his worst enemy, the absolute embodiment of everything in the universe that he loathed. The woman he loved, the mother of his child, his best friend for over a decade had lied, cheated, and apparently covered up the return of the single most dangerous enemy Earth had ever known.

Something inside of him broke.

Clint didn’t remember standing up. He wasn’t even aware of his fist colliding viciously with Loki’s face. He more or less zombie-walked his way through the door with his foot and beating the living daylights out of the guards. Sofia was screaming, people were screaming, and one of the guards swung what looked like an axe at him, narrowly missing his body and smashing through a control panel.

He ran. He didn’t know that at that moment, the rest of his teammates, the other Avengers, were capitalising on the commotion going on inside the old SHIELD building and using it to break themselves out. He didn’t know that when the building started to go up in flames as a result Thor would come smashing his way in and complete the mass breakout. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care.

With Sofia clutched to his chest, Clint ran as far and as fast as he could, running until he reached a cheap motel that they could spend the night in, until he had nearly dropped dead from exhaustion, until he had a stitch in his side and was wheezing.

Inside he placed his daughter on the bed, blindly turning the TV on to some children’s show, and then locked himself in the tiny bathroom where he collapsed and sobbed into the cheap white towels, wondering why the hell his life had suddenly gone so wrong.

xxx

Nearly eight miles from where Clint Barton had escaped to with his daughter, Loki stood as he surveyed the burning wreckage of the old SHIELD building. The escaping Avengers had virtually totalled the place.

When the axe had smashed the control panel, the doors had unlocked, giving all three men an easy way out. Steve had been the first to break loose of his bindings, and had freed the others (a fact that had seriously concerned Loki until he’d seen the empty look in his eyes, and the way that he refused to look at either Tony or the unconscious Bruce). Tony had started the fire in his cell (possibly by accident—he would have to review the security footage (if it had survived) to be sure), which had drawn Thor, who was frantically policing the night skies up until then. It had taken them all of ten minutes to break out and destroy his base, and had cost him four of his hit men in the process.

Loki smiled. Everything so far was going exactly as planned.

The sun began to peek over the horizon, slipping its rays between the tall buildings of New York. The whole city was waking up, including he realized, one red-haired agent back at his place.

Loki sighed heavily and turned to head back to his dingy apartment. It was time to deal with Natasha Romanov.


	20. Chapter 20

When Natasha awoke upon the floor of the dingy apartment, she did so with the uncomfortable feeling that when she opened her eyes she was going to regret it. Her body ached, a common enough occurrence that it didn’t really bother her, but was today accompanied by a cold, hard knowledge that sat in the pit of her stomach like a rock. She remembered what had happened last night, and the thought of it made her sick. The fight with Clint had been horrible, and the devastation of their decision to split up still felt like a punch to the abdomen. It seemed inconceivable now to think that after so many years, after a child, after everything really, that she would be without him.

In the early hours of the morning, when she had arrived at Loki’s apartment, she had been broken, the barely-functioning shell of herself that she had been trying to pass off as truth. To her he had seemed to be a godsend, strong and familiar, a warm blanket in the midst of the freezing Arctic. She had let herself succumb to the temptation, and for a while she had felt at peace with him, covered by the cloak of night.

Now, with the light of the morning sun illuminating the world around her, Natasha could feel that comfort and warm relief slipping away. It had felt safe, but it had been wrong. It had felt wrong. She felt dirty, disgusting and tainted, as though Loki were a kind of coat that had covered her skin; one that looked nice to the observer, but itched and didn’t fit right, and left red lines on your skin where it was too tight. Loki wasn’t Clint, and therefore everything seemed wrong.

She opened her eyes, taking in the familiar shapes and outlines of the apartment’s furnishings, and wrapping the comforter more tightly around her body. She was alone.

Where had Loki gone? Had he slipped off in the night to spare her the awkwardness of waking up next to him? Was he giving her time to fix herself up before they saw each other again and parted ways? In a lot of ways she was grateful for that, grateful that she wouldn’t have to endure a conversation the likes of “I appreciate your friendship, and your comforting me in a time of need, but I don’t want to be with you.”

For if there was one thing that was absolutely certain to her, especially now when confronted by his absence, it was that what had happened last night would not be repeated. It was a one-time thing.

Natasha got up and dressed quickly, folding the blanket beside her on the couch. Perhaps, she thought, she would make herself a quick cup of coffee and then leave. She’d head back to the tower and try to work her way back into Clint and Sofia’s life, try to make things up with Clint. He would never have to know what had happened. She could bury it with the other shades of red in her ledger, something to be dealt with later. She could fix this…everything would be okay.

She turned to coffee pot on and set it to brew. She wouldn’t normally drink the stuff, but recent events could justify it. While she waited, she sat down on the edge of the sofa and turned on the television.

She was idly watching an advertisement for laundry detergent when the door to the apartment opened, and Loki strode in clad head to toe in his Asgardian battle garb. In the time frame of less than ten seconds a bolt of blue energy shot forth from his sceptre striking her directly in the chest, and stunning her. She never had a chance to react before she hit the floor, unconscious.

“Lock her up,” the demigod ordered the two men that entered behind him.

With brisk nods, they quickly bound Natasha’s hands and feet before carrying her out of the room and down the stairs.

Loki looked around the tiny apartment with a satisfied smirk before turning on his heel and heading for the door. At that very moment he knew that his agents were ensuring his total takeover. Months, years of planning had finally come to fruition. His network was expansive, covering entire continents. One thing Loki loved about these mortals was how simply one could buy their loyalty—in many cases he had not needed to even use the powers of his sceptre.

He had travelled for over a year, bringing the key puppets in his plans under his control, and now the coup was happening. His agents were inciting chaos around the world, tearing down the foolish and flawed structures that the mortals had built for themselves, silencing the dissenters, and leaving their seats of power open for him to assume command. And now he would do so easily now; for thanks to his brilliant plan, to his genius and the stupidity of the Romanov woman, the only beings capable of stopping him were scattered and surely fighting amongst themselves. He had broken the seemingly infallible trust of the Avengers, turned one of their own against them, and given them the fuel they needed to tear each other to shreds, all over something as foolish as sentiment.

Loki laughed to himself as he headed out of the building. The entire world was about to see something new, and without their defenders, it would bring them to their knees.


	21. Chapter 21

Time passed outside the walls of Avenger Tower without acknowledgement from its inhabitants. While the world was turned entirely on its head outside their windows, life inside remained exactly the same.

The fallout from their imprisonment at the hands of the group that had kidnapped them was enormous. The entire building had become a kind of web of empty hallways and awkward silence.

Ever since the group had broken out of their prison, Tony Stark had holed himself up in the inner confines of his part of the building. The doors remained locked, the blinds drawn, and for three solid weeks the genius did not emerge. Nobody save for his AI robots Dummy and You were permitted to approach him, JARVIS the only one able to elicit any kind of verbal response from the billionaire. His habits became more and more eccentric with every passing day. Sometimes he would stay awake for days at a time, sleep for only two or three hours, then wake up and return to work. Tony refused to have any contact with the outside world, ignoring pleas from SHIELD to help them against Loki (who was apparently back now, not that he cared). He drank almost constantly, often launching into drunken rages where he shouted at the robots and walls, broke things, and threw tools around.

Other times he would end up sprawled unconscious on the cold concrete floor for over twenty hours at a time, shirtless and often missing a sock, shivering until Dummy would cover him with the red comforter from his bed. On these days he would wake up slowly, breathing the smell of the blanket deeply, desperately searching (though he would never admit it to anyone) for some small trace of Steve, of the way he smelled. These were the days he would spend the morning crying, mourning without reprieve the loss of the only person he had ever really been in love with, and beating himself up for missing a man who had admitted to being “sickened” by the idea of their relationship.

On these days JARVIS made a point of keeping a video camera trained on him, a phone primed to call the emergency services and Pepper Potts in case Tony should one day decide that it wasn’t worth it anymore, that he couldn’t take the pain of not having Steve.

On the other side of the building Steve Rogers was faring just as badly. His entire team, and his entire life had come crashing down around him in the span of just a few hours.

Three weeks ago everything had fallen apart. In the course of one night he had found out that his boyfriend had been cheating on him with Bruce Banner; and been told by Clint (and later Fury) that Natasha, who he had lived with, fought alongside, and babysat for had been secretly assisting Loki in his return the whole time. She was gone, Clint had been holed up with his daughter and ignoring any and all attempts to contact him, Tony had sealed himself in his lab (not that that was necessarily a bad thing—Steve knew he couldn’t yet handle seeing him), and Bruce was currently drifting in and out of consciousness in his part of the building, monitored by JARVIS. He was another one Steve couldn’t stand to look at right now. The very thought of those messages, the thought of Bruce and Tony together in the ways that Steve had always thought were to be held sacred between Tony and himself made him want to throw up.

Even Thor was gone, and his absence was felt. Where the huge Norse god could once be counted upon to liven a place up with his booming voice and unintentionally ridiculous antics, he was no longer living in the tower at all. When Loki had taken over, Jane had insisted upon hiding him away somewhere in the middle of nowhere to protect him. His younger brother was stronger and more dangerous than ever before thanks to the power of his sceptre, and Jane had known that Loki would probably try to find and destroy his older brother. So far they seemed to be flying under the radar, miraculously when one considered how difficult it is to attempt to hide Thor anywhere.

This left Steve alone.

He alone had tried to fight off Loki, but it hadn’t been enough. He had been distracted and unused to fighting without his teammates. The demigod had thrown him thirteen stories from the Empire State building, through a window. The serum had stopped him from being killed, but it had left its mark. Even with his incredibly advanced healing he was still in a cast and bandages. His left foot and hand were encased in plaster, and his whole body was scratched and sore from the glass.

Steve was tired. He felt old and weary, and most of all alone. To pass the time, he would sit in his rooms all day, gradually wallpapering his room with drawings. It kept him busy, he supposed. The problem was that no matter how hard he tried; Tony managed to insert himself into everyone until his walls were just a blur of Tony Stark’s face, a montage of the man he loved smiling, sleeping, laughing, thinking; a sea of different emotions in charcoal, spread on a sheet of ivory pages, and peppered with small water stains from where his tears had fallen.

The Avengers as the world had known them were now a thing of the past. Outside the tower walls, Loki had taken over completely. SHIELD had fallen to him in a matter of hours leaving Loki unbridled access and control over the rest of the world. The various assassinations and take-overs of the government’s superpowers around the world had gone off without a hitch. Many of the planet’s citizens had not even realized that a change in power had been made until the demigod had hijacked the airwaves of all public media outlets and broadcast a very public speech to the world that informed them of his new laws as the supreme ruler of Earth.

Seemingly overnight, anyone who attempted to deny or rebel against that fact disappeared, never to be heard from again. It had only taken a matter of days to find that the world could settle easily into its new rule. People went on with their lives for the most part, their heads bowed low to avoid the attention of the ruler and his army of spies and police. With all the dissenters having disappeared, all that was left was the general population, apathetic as a rule to anything that did not directly interfere with their day-to-day lives. What did they care if one man now controlled all the governments of the world? Their lives for the most part could still go on unhindered. Some were even convinced that it was an improvement, given that with no hope left to fight for, the power struggles of the world seemed to disappear. They did not know of the mass slaughters of all who dared to speak against the great ruler.

Life went on in silent oppression, while the planet’s ruler reclined on a throne he’d had built for himself, an impressive piece of gold and lush fabrics. The Avengers were for all intents and purposes gone after such an absence from the public eye. Many assumed that they had been defeated, not knowing of the private torments inflicted on them while they hid in their tower only a few miles from the very place where the throne resided.

Their heroes had disappeared; let them down in their time of need. The people of the word gave up on them, and allowed themselves to be subjugated by the new ruling. The general rule seemed to be “don’t rock the boat”.

Only the bravest among them held out a silent hope that someone would emerge from the ashes, rise up and bring down Loki. They were the idealists who held out the belief that man was never made to be a pawn in the plans of greater beings, that only humans should be able to rule humans. They were the ones that waited every day for someone to rise up and tip the proverbial boat right over, to shake the foundations of Loki’s rule, and bring freedom back to a world that desperately needed it.  
The problem was that they were human, without a prayer against the powers of demigods and magic. They knew they didn’t have a chance without the power of their heroes behind them. This was the sticking point for the resistance, or would have been, had one of their number not been a young woman by the name of Jane Foster.


	22. Chapter 22

Jane arose to the deafening sound of Thor’s snores in her ear. Really it was remarkable that she’d managed to sleep at all, given that she was fairly sure the volume rivalled an airplane’s engine.

Eyes barely open, she rolled out of bed and sat down at her computer. She was exhausted. Thor had kept her up all night (and not in a good way either). He was stressed beyond belief, worried about his teammates and the return of his brother. Jane knew that he was dying to go back to New York City, itching to return to his team (or what was left of it) and more than anything, wishing desperately that he could face his brother down, and try again, in the way she knew he would never stop trying, to convince Loki to give up the throne he had built for himself. She knew that if he had his way, he would be flying to The Big Apple this very moment, and that he was only staying here because she had begged him to.

In truth, Jane knew she was being selfish and scared, but the prospect of losing him to the twisted plans of his brother was more than she could bear. So to try and make up for it she joined the resistance. As a member, she gathered and heard information. She knew the inner workings of the plan that was being formed in an attempt to bring down the ruler. She also knew that without the help of the Avengers it would fail.

And without all of the Avengers, there were no Avengers, period.

She knew that something had to be done, and so as she had so many times before, Jane began to strategize, to organize, to plan for and rule out any and all variables that might cause her solution to fail.

Really, in many ways designing a strategy was not so different from planning one of her research experiments.

Jane heard her front door open and shut loudly from down the hall. “Hello?” she could hear a familiar voice calling from down the hall, “You guys better not be naked!

I’m coming in.”

Jane smiled to herself. Darcy, as usual, had all the subtlety of an atomic bomb.

Her bedroom door opened and Darcy walked in, carrying in her arms a bunch of file folders and a box of Krispy Kreme donuts. “Actually, on second thought, he can be naked,” she said as the door closed behind her, “but I have not had nearly enough coffee or booze to deal with you in whatever kinky lingerie you have.”

Jane blushed, “I do not wear-“

“Not yet,” Darcy declared, “but your birthday is coming up…”

“Darcy, don’t even think-“

“We could totally get you some like, chick armour that barely covers the important bits,” the girl continued ignoring Jane’s protests, “like some kind of sexy Asgardian costume. Or would that be like, sacrilege or something, since the place is full of gods? I did see a sexy nun costume though so I guess nobody cares that much…might get the old hammer a-swinging _if you know what I mean_ …”

“Darcy!” Jane yelped, her face a beet red.

“Oh okay fine,” the younger girl submitted, “It was just an idea…” She had a kind of wicked grin on her face that Jane didn’t like. She looked back over at the still snoring Thor. The man could sleep through a bomb going off, she thought to herself. “What do you have for me?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

Darcy’s demeanour switched to businesslike in seconds. “Not a lot. The Avengers are still off the grid. Stark, Rogers, and Banner haven’t been seen since he-“ she gestured to Thor, “-helped them burn down the old SHIELD headquarters.”

“What about Barton and Romanov?”

“Barton has been seen once in Queens,” Darcy said, “But as far as we can tell he hasn’t made contact. Not that he would necessarily, he dropped out of the game a couple years ago remember?”

Jane nodded. “And the Widow?”

Darcy paused for a moment. “Nothing really definitive, but there are…rumours.”

Jane frowned. “What kind of rumours?” she pressed.

“People are saying lots of things. Some people think she’s in the tower as well, but Thor told us she didn’t escape with them so obviously that isn’t true. Some of my guys are telling me that Loki has her in one of his cells, possibly in a place like Alcatraz. Apparently he is using that now to hold a lot of human political enemies.”

“Why Alcatraz?” Jane asked, “There haven’t been prisoners there for years—it’s not exactly the most secure of prisons out there.”

“It is probably because of the history and antiquity surrounding it,” Thor said causing both women to flinch in surprise. Neither of them has even noticed him stop snoring, so used to tuning it out as they were.

“Yeah but why would he care about that?” Darcy asked, “It’s a dusty old building. You probably have nicer broom closets on Asgard.”

“That we do,” the demigod acquiesced, “Yet Loki has always, as my friend the man of iron has said, had a flair for the dramatic. I think he would like to use any place of some historical importance so that he could replace its history with his own.”

There was a long paused in which the two women gaped at Thor. Who knew he could be…insightful?

“That’s true,” Jane admitted finally. “He wants to make the entire world in his image. He’d try to take anything that had a significant history without him in it and stick himself in there.”

“I was talking to Hank, and he said he’d run a remote thermal scan of a lot of major landmarks. Apparently Loki is using a lot of landmarks as bases and prisons.”

“Wonderful…” Jane mumbled. “So we think the widow’s in one of these landmark prisons?”

“It’s possible,” Darcy replied, “But there’s one other theory.”

“Which is?”

“People are saying that she’s helping him. That she gave him the ammo to tear apart the team.”

“Why would she do that?” Jane asked. “She’s been an Avenger for years, and a SHIELD agent for longer. Why would she suddenly turn on them?”

“She’s switched sides before,” Darcy reminded her quietly. “She used to be the Russians’ and she switched to us.”

“Yeah, but because of Hawkeye,” Jane protested her.

“She switched because somebody convinced her it was a better option. Who’s to say that she wouldn’t do it again?”

“But she still has Clint! And their daughter! No mother would abandon her child, let alone do so to go join an army and wage a war against her own family and friends.”

“You never know,” Darcy said. She turned to Thor. “You knew her best out of the three of us. Would she switch sides?”

Thor thought for a long moment. “I do not like to consider that any of the people I have fought beside would exact such a betrayal. Yet I felt the same about my brother once too, and I now face him in battle for the third time. In truth, I do not know for sure, but there has been much tension within the tower these past weeks. In particular between Natasha and friend Clint.”

“Enough to make her switch sides?” Jane asked.

“I do not know,” Thor admitted.

“We need to talk to her,” Jane said decisively. “And we need to get into that tower and get the rest of them off their asses. Darcy, you need to do that.”

“Why me?”

“Because if nothing else you will annoy them to the point that they agree just to get you to shut up.”

“I am not annoying!”

“Please Darcy, just do this!”

“Fine.”

“Thor, I need you to break in to Alcatraz. I’m going to help. We might be taking her with us, but we can’t let Loki know she’s gone.”

It took them a moment to clue in. “No Jane,” he began.

“We really don’t have a choice do we?” she said determinedly. She crossed over to the sink and before either of them could move to stop her had picked up a pair of scissors and cut most of her hair off.

“Jane!”

“Darcy, I need you to run to the store and get me some hair dye. You know the colour of red I assume?”  
“You don’t look like her though,” the other girl protested. “Your face is all different.”

“It won’t be a problem,” Jane said determinedly.

“But—”

“Go to the store now Darcy!”

“Okay, alright! I’m going!”

Jane turned to Thor whose face looked stricken. “You have to trust me,” she whispered. “I know what I’m doing.”

“If my brother should find out that you were there,” he said, his hand reaching out to touch her poorly clipped hair almost reverently, “Especially if he knew we had

helped a prisoner such as her escape, he would most certainly try to harm you.”

“I know,” she said, her hand reaching to cover his.

“If something were to happen to you, it would destroy me,” he told her.

“Something could just as easily happen to me in my lab,” she pointed out, “Sometimes we need to take risks if it’s the right thing to do.”

Thor paused for a moment, just looking at her. “You would have made a fine Asgardian warrior,” he told her.

She smiled a little at that, knowing that from Thor this was as great a compliment as he could probably have given.

She stepped away from him, taking a legal notepad from the drawer of her bedside table. “So we need to figure out how we’re going to get in…”


	23. Chapter 23

One thing that could be said for the converted prison of Alcatraz is that it was not uncomfortable. The room in which she stayed was reasonably sized, containing a bed, a small sink and a toilet. It also boasted a shelf where she could have put a small television or perhaps some photos and letters, something to remind her of home.

She had no possessions of course, given the circumstances under which she had been brought here, but the gesture must have been nice for the other prisoners.

Natasha sat cross-legged on the floor, her hands resting lightly on her thighs. She barely moved, her gaze fixed on the opposing wall. She could have been mistaken for a wax figure until you looked closer and saw the very small movements of her chest as she breathed, and the infrequent flutter of her eyelashes when she blinked. She had been like this for hours, locked in a form of meditation. In many ways, she had just shut down.

It was over for her. In the past weeks that she had spent in the prison she had come to know the full scope of Loki’s plan. Now that he no longer needed to hide it, he had been very open about the whole thing, eager to show her just how stupid she had been. It all seemed so obvious now, how she had walked so easily into his trap, how he had played her, how he had used her conflict with Clint to infiltrate and destroy. She knew that the other Avengers now were holed up within the tower, one unconscious, and the other two not speaking to each other. She knew that Clint had taken Sofia and run. If she had to guess she would assume that he had gone to hide with some of his old connections from before the Avengers. There were a lot of people who owed him favours from the old days, and she knew he’d cash in every single one if it meant keeping his daughter safe. In the meantime though, he was out of the picture. There was no one to stand against Loki.

And so, she had resigned herself to a life of exile within the walls of Alcatraz prison, a life where she could hide from the reputation she now had of being Loki’s tool to return to power, to escape from the shame of having allowed the treacherous demigod to take her in so completely. The eight by ten cell she now sat in was her new life whether she liked it or not. She knew she deserved it anyhow.

“Dinner time,” a voice called to her, accompanied by a loud rattle of a broken trolley on the concrete floor.

Natasha’s eyes flicked to the cell door, where a young woman was standing with a tray of the off-white mush that typically passed as food around here.

Natasha frowned. “I’m not hungry,” she told her. It wasn’t a total lie, though her stomach protested otherwise. She was hungry, but not enough to try eating that.

“Take it anyway,” the girl insisted, slipping the tray through a small slot designed for the delivery of meals.

Natasha glared at the tray on the floor as she heard the girl’s footsteps continuing on down the cellblock with her trolley. This girl must be new. The last time a guard had left food in her cell when she’d told them not to she had used the rubber band around her utensils and a napkin to fashion a catapult. She’d hurled the porridge into a guards face and ran, almost making it to the end of the hall before she was nabbed. It hadn’t been the most well thought out plan, but had shown her just how hopelessly trapped she was here. And oddly enough, it had been the last time any guard had insisted on giving her food.

In truth though, she was hungry. When she was young, the Russians in charge of the Red Room program had trained her to ignore basic instincts, including the need for food, but even that training had its limits. That bowl of mush was even starting to smell pretty appealing from its position across the room.

For ten solid minutes she fought with herself. Would accepting it be a sign of giving in, or just a sign of acceptance of her body’s basic needs? Would Loki think she was caving in? Giving up? (As a matter of fact she nearly had given up, but that was not for the demigod to know).

In the end she caved. Her innate stubbornness could not compete with nature, and thus she nearly inhaled the porridge-like mixture. As a matter of fact, so quickly did she consume her food; she nearly missed the tiny piece of paper that was buried underneath it.

_Natasha,_   
_An escape initiative has been planned for tonight._   
_I do not like to ask this but it is imperative that you end up in the hospital area. Your face should be unrecognizable._   
_Jane Foster_

Natasha frowned, crumpling the paper in her hand and sticking it surreptitiously into the flat ugly shoe she had been given to wear. She didn’t know what to think of it. Was it a trap? Had a plan actually been made? Why was Jane Foster involved in her rescue—it wasn’t as though they’d ever really hit it off?

Nevertheless what choice did she really have? It’s not as though her situation could get much worse. She had to trust that Jane Foster could really get her out of here.

This however left the problem of the directions given to her. How was she going to disguise herself when she had nothing but a Spartan cell to work with? How was she going to get out of her cell and to the hospital area, wherever that even was?

She understood in less than a minute.

Ouch. This was going to hurt a lot.

***

She struck at dinnertime. A guard, a different one than the one who had delivered the message, brought her the usual bowl of flavourless porridge.

“Doesn’t Loki have something better to feed his prisoners than this shit?” she asked.

The guard ignored her, slipping the bowl through the food slot.

“Hey!” Natasha said hitting the metal bars. “I’m talking to you!”

The guard paid her no attention.

Here was her moment. “HEY!” she screamed, her voice echoing and causing a few other inmates to protest. “TURN AROUND YOU FUCKING BASTARD!” Natasha began to scream, rattling the bars. Her eyes rolled in her head, she screamed expletives, and she began to smash her face into the brick wall.

The screams very quickly turned into ones of pain as she dragged her face across the jagged concrete. She was bleeding, her lips and cheeks cut, and within moments guards were rushing into her tiny cell, forcing her kicking and screaming into a straight jacket. Somebody wiped the blood and tears from her face, and they hauled her onto a stretcher. She cried and screamed all the way down the hall and around several corners into the makeshift hospital room.

Upon her arrival she was delivered to a young woman with her hair pulled back beneath a nurse’s cap. She looked a bit familiar, though Natasha in her bloodied haze couldn’t figure out why. Her face was bandaged thoroughly, her cuts and bruises disinfected, and she was made to lie down in the tiny ward for observation.

She passed out.

When Natasha awoke, the floor was dark, and someone was shaking her shoulder. A tall orderly stood over her accompanied by the nurse from earlier. It clicked in Natasha’s mind just then. It was Thor and Jane Foster.

Pressing a finger to her lips to signal that she should be quiet, Jane helped her to her feet and into the waiting arms of Thor. The hulking demigod hugged her tightly. “I have missed you greatly, friend Natasha,” he whispered. Natasha was surprised. She didn’t think it was possible for Thor to whisper.

Jane removed the cap from her head revealing short and bright red hair, styled to match Natasha’s. The colour looked ridiculous on her, and Natasha would have smiled had it not been for the fact that she thought that if she smiled her scabs and cuts would crack. Then, very carefully, Jane bandaged her own face to match Natasha’s. They were now virtually indistinguishable, particularly since Jane had somehow gained the possession of a set of prison clothes. She lay down in Natasha’s place, completing the illusion.

Thor took a step towards Jane, pressing his lips to her bandaged forehead. “Be safe,” he whispered to her. Then he bundled Natasha up in his arms and carried her out into the hallway.

Alcatraz was surprisingly poorly guarded. Most of the men working could be heard playing a rousing game of poker in another room. Thor quite simply, walked out a side door carrying her.

The air was cold and damp outside, chilling her to the bone, but she breathed it in deeply. Never had she handled imprisonment well, and it was a few moments of heaven just to be outside and free again.

Thor put her down and she stood unsteadily, able to feel the dewy grass through the thin soles of her shoes. It must have been around two or three in the morning.  
She looked over at the demigod just in time to see his mighty hammer Mjolnir fly to his hand, seemingly from across the water. Absently, Natasha found herself wondering if Thor’s hammer had ever come to him with a dead animal or bug splatters covering it. Could you still call that road kill then?

Thor began spinning his hammer at a high velocity, drawing the forces of his power to him. Reaching out to her, he wrapped his hand around her waist, and within moments she found herself flying through the air, clinging to a huge Norse man.

Nobody even sounded an alarm. It was amazing really. Loki’s new forces were really not that impressive.

Natasha closed her eyes to the scenery that went whizzing by as Thor headed back to New York with her. In the distance she could see the bright illumination of Tony Stark’s ridiculous tower, the Avengers tower.

_Home._

God how she’d missed it. In just a few minutes she would be home. With luck Loki wouldn’t even know she was gone until she was right in front of him again, sending the full voltage of her Widow’s Bite bracelets into his skull. She wouldn’t be satisfied until Loki paid for destroying her team and her family.

But that would come later. There was still the not-so-tiny problem of banding the team back together. And they would hardly trust her now.

Natasha took a deep breath as she flew through the air towards her former home. She had a long way to go, but finally, a plan could be set into motion.


	24. Chapter 24

They landed with a loud thump on the roof of the tower. Thor very carefully placed Natasha on the ground where she sat down heavily, panting hard. The thin atmosphere had made breathing very difficult, particularly through the bandages covering her face. She was exhausted, soaked, freezing, and in pain though she refrained from complaining. She felt she deserved every bit of it.

Pepper Potts, who immediately wrapped an arm around Natasha’s waist, met them and half carried her into the tower. “Get inside quickly Thor,” she shouted over the winds that whirled her hair around her face, “Loki’s got people watching the tower!”

Thor nodded and ducked down behind her, following the two women into the upper apartments of Tony Stark. The billionaire himself was sitting on a couch, clearly in the midst of a full-on sulk. Upon seeing Natasha he didn’t stand but rather glared petulantly at her from where he was sitting. “What the hell is she doing here?” he snapped.

“We don’t have time for diva displays right now,” Pepper snapped at him, “Move.”

There were very few people from whom Tony would take an order, but fortunately for Natasha’s weakened body, his CEO was one of them. He rose and allowed them to lie her down upon his cushions.

“JARVIS,” Pepper called out to the AI, “We need everyone else in here. Can you arrange it?”

“I can certainly try madam,” the voice responded, “But I think we may find we encounter some resistance if we attempt a full assembly.”

“Tell them that if they don’t get their asses up here right now I will have the entire power supply cut off from the building and will leave them to play board games with Darcy again,” Pepper retorted. She had the air of a woman long since past the end of her rope.

After a moment the AI spoke again. “They are on their way up. I suspect the elevator will arrive in thirty-eight seconds.”

“Board games with Darcy?” Natasha asked quietly.

“She arrived here a few days ago,” Pepper replied, “Whipped all of them into a frenzy when she forced them all to play Monopoly. Apparently she cheats worse than Tony.”

“I do not cheat,” Tony interjected, “The rules don’t say anything about—“

“Installing tiny missiles on the game pieces so that you can destroy your opponents’ hotels and literally break out of jail does qualify as cheating Tony, and I don’t care what the rules say,” Pepper interjected with a tone that could only come from having had to have this conversation too many times before, “Also,” she continued, turning back to Natasha, “They’re all afraid of her.”

“Afraid of who?” Steve asked as the elevator doors closed behind him. He very pointedly refrained from looking at the newly awoken Bruce Banner, sitting in the wheelchair he still needed due to the side effects of the drug; or at his ex-boyfriend who had moved to a bar stool and was drinking his whisky his body appearing relaxed save for the tight lines around his eyes and the edges of his mouth.

“Afraid of the Lady Darcy,” Thor laughed heartily, “She does not come to even the shoulder of most of you!”

“Excuse me,” Tony said, turning his attention to the hulking blonde demigod before him, “She tasered the god of thunder, ran him over with a car, has terrified my bots into puddles of oil and computer chips, and I have personally seen her braid your hair with pink ribbons. Being afraid of her is not ridiculous, it’s a fucking survival instinct!”

“You guys!” Pepper snapped. “All of you better shut up and pay attention right now, because Dr. Foster is currently sitting in a cell, pretending to be her,” she said, pointing at Natasha, “And risking her life so we can get this inside intel and take Loki down! Now can you all please stop bickering for five goddamn minutes so we can actually have a plan when he shows up in oh, I don’t know, probably less than an hour since Thor landed right on top of here in all his lightning and thundering glory!”  
The men fell silent for a moment before Tony spoke. “Why the hell should we trust her?”

“How can you say something so stupid Tony, she’s our teammate!” Steve said angrily. It was the first thing in weeks that he’s said to his ex-boyfriend.

“She says,” Tony grumbled.

“What are you guys talking about?” Bruce asked confusedly from the chair. Pepper and Darcy, who had only come upstairs a few moments ago, looked equally as perplexed.

Steve was up on his feet and only a few inches from Tony, an expression of outrage on his face. “You do not make accusations like that without evidence Stark, do you hear me!”

“Get out of my face,” Tony growled, a vein jumping in his wrist. “I’m not working with someone I can’t trust.”

“You are the last person to be lecturing anyone about trust!” Steve retorted furiously, his hands balled up into fists.

“Oh please, tell me more about how terrible a person I am, how much I ‘sicken’ you,” he said, drawing air quotes around the words taken from when they had broken up in the cell.

“Stop it you guys!” Pepper interjected furiously. “Tony, explain what you mean or get out and let us work without you.”

“Fine,” the billionaire said sharply, pulling up a screen from his table. With just a few quick commands he had pulled up a bunch of photos, grainy as though from a cellphone, but clear enough to make out the identities of Natasha Romanov and Loki in a sleepy embrace.

The room fell silent as all its inhabitants turned slowly to look at the Widow.

“Explain yourself,” Pepper said, her voice dangerously low, “And you had better have a good reason for why an innocent civilian is currently sitting in a cell, risking her life for you and to take down Loki, when it looks an awful lot like you were helping him rise in the first place.”

Natasha looked around at the stony faces that glared back at her, and for one of the first times in her entire life she felt true fear stir within her. She especially couldn’t look at Thor, whose eyes were full of pain and betrayal, especially given the current predicament of his love.

“I…” she began, “Um…”

In the end she found that the only way to tell them was to start at the beginning. She told them of intercepting the message from SHIELD about the demigod’s return, of breaking into his apartment, of how he’d convinced her of his intentions and love for his brother, of meeting Loki in the park, her fights with Clint, and finally of that terrible night where it had all come to an ugly head, her fight with Clint, seeking refuge with Loki, of the sex, of his betrayal and her subsequent imprisonment, and how she learned later that he’d stolen her memories and used them to tear apart the Avengers. She told them of how she’s fallen completely and totally into his trap, and allowed herself to be so consumed by her anger and the passion she’d thought she had with Loki that it brought the world to its knees. “I was completely and brutally compromised,” she finished, her voice cracking from overuse.

There was a very long silence as the teammates digested this information. Nobody really knew what to say to it.

“Okay,” Pepper finally broke the silence, “I think that that was…a lot to digest…”

There was a small chuckle of agreement from around the room.

“But,” she continued, “I don’t think we have time to try and sort this all out right now. We’ll deal with it all later, but there’s one really important thing in all of this, and it’s actually in our favour,” she paused to look around at them. “Loki wanted this team divided,” she continued, “That means that he knows that if you all stand together he can’t beat you. He’s coming here right now for two reasons, one is to try and destroy Thor which let’s face it, at this point that’s old news; and the other is that he wants to make sure that this team cannot unite to stand against him. So…whatever problems you guys are having now, you need to decide right now whether you can deal with it long enough to defeat him, or if you are going to just give up and let him take over because you can’t separate your personal lives from this job.”

“Madam, my scanners have detected an incoming attack approximately three and a half minutes away,” The AI reported.

“Make your decision now,” Pepper said to them. She and Darcy both gathered up the emergency kits that Tony invariably kept at different locations in the tower in the event of a direct attack, and headed for the elevator. The doors closed behind her and the elevator descended, heading to the absolute lowest basement level that could also serve as a kind of bunker.

The teammates looked at each other. Nobody really needed to explain his or her choices. They all knew that there was no way they could stand by and let Loki win.

In a flurry of motion the Avengers bustled around and prepared themselves for battle, each in their own way. Three minutes and twenty two seconds after JARVIS’s announcement they were dressed and ready for battle.

Eight seconds later they heard a loud bang upon the rooftop and the AI announced what they already knew.

Loki was here.

It was time to fight.


	25. Chapter 25

When Natasha first set eyes upon the demigod she barely recognized him. The sudden onset of such total power had perverted the man that had once been.

Loki’s hair was wild, his complexion pallid. He had lost weight, stretching the skin of his already thin frame even tighter over his skeletal figure. The clothes he was dressed in were reminiscent of those he had worn in Asgard, though they were now jet-black and adorned with heavy gold medallions and decorations.

His eyes though, were what were truly frightening about him, enough so to cause the group of heroes to take a step back. No longer even vaguely resembling those of his brother or a human, they were now just two electric blue orbs that crackled with energy in his skull, matching the unearthly glow of the Tesseract that had once caused so many problems.

“Holy shit,” she heard Tony mumble over the SHIELD comm.

She privately agreed.

“Brother!” Thor called out, “You have caused great pain here, I beg you give up the throne and end this madness!”

“I have brought this planet to its finest hour!” Loki said, his voice louder and more terrifying than it had ever been before, “YOU are the only things foolish enough to attempt to stop it! The world is mine to command and I have led it into glory! You, Thor and your Avengers,” he stressed the word with obvious disdain, “Are traitors to the my rule, and must be executed!” He whirled his sceptre around sending bolts of blue energy at the team who scattered. Pieces of concrete vaporized in its wake leaving only smoking holes of melted tar behind.

“Loki!” Thor cried out stepping from behind Tony’s satellite dish, “I beg of you, allow us to resolve this with peace!”

Loki’s eyes seemed to flare up with even more furious energy as he sent five bursts of energy in quick succession at Thor in reply.

“Yeah, somehow I don’t think diplomacy is going to decide this one,” Tony said over the communicator before shooting up into the sky.

Loki’s attention followed him momentarily allowing Steve time to hurl his shield at the villain. Loki spotted it at the last moment and ducked, though not quickly enough to prevent it from knocking the helm off his brow. “You’ll pay for that!” he hissed at the captain, sending a blue lightning bolt shooting at him from the end of his sceptre. Natasha barely had time to knock Steve out of the way, feeling the power of his energy ruffle her hair as she hit the ground on top of him. Quickly, she rolled and drew her guns, firing both at Loki who threw up a bright blue shield that seemed to absorb them. From within it he shot another flurry of energy bolts at the team, hitting Tony in the leg even as he dodged the first two and taking out his propulser. For a long and horrible moment they were forced to watch as the suit shuddered and twisted in the sky, then was hit again by Loki, this time directly in the chest.

“No!” Steve cried out as Tony began to fall, disappearing below the edge of the rooftop. The Hulk gave a roar of fury and hurled himself after Tony, disappearing over the edge as well.

“Bruce!” Natasha screamed, as they heard a massive crash as something hit the ground below hard. People began to scream and ran out into the streets below trying to figure out what was going on.

Loki grinned and shot multiple bolts of energy out at the skyscrapers surrounding the Avengers’ tower, breaking off huge pieces of brick and metal and raining them down upon the innocent people below.

“Clear the streets!” Steve was screaming into his communicator. Natasha didn’t even know to whom. There was no response from the Hulk or Tony. “Thor!” He shouted, “Try to break those pieces up! Get the police, get someone to get them all underground!”

Thor took off heading for the biggest sections of debris and shooting lightning bolts at them to try and break them into smaller, less deadly pieces. They were still raining down on the crowd below though, some of them big enough to do damage.

“CLEAR THE STREETS!” Natasha was screaming into her communicator. The small minute it took her to do this, and the small break in the volley of bullets she was firing at Loki provided just the opportunity he had been waiting for.

With a cry of fury he sent a blast of energy flying at her, capitalizing on her distraction.

“Natasha!” Steve cried diving in front of her with his newly reclaimed shield. The metal stopped the blast, but drove them back towards the edge leaving her half hanging over a sixty story drop upside down, and clinging by her fingers to the concrete.

Reaching down Steve hauled her back up and turned to block another blast of Loki’s magic.

On her feet again, she took a quick analysis of the situation and began yelling attack plans into the communicator. The shield held in front of them, they charged Loki, driving him backwards as Steve blocked the energy and she ducked under Loki’s arms placing her too close for him to hit her with the blue magic. With a scream of fury she clapped her hands on the sides of Loki’s face, delivering a double blast of the electric shock from the Widow’s bite bracelets. He screamed in agony, reeling back from her.

Falling back, the pain from her aching body seemed to catch up with her as she felt a sharp stabbing sensation in her left side. Squinting against the pain she momentarily brought her hand to her abdomen.

There was a loud cracking sound and Natasha looked up to her horror to see the captain’s head go crashing into the pavement, his shield flying askew in the opposite direction.

Loki smiled malevolently and raised his sceptre as a spear to bring down on the Captain’s exposed neck.

With a cry of rage, Natasha threw herself at him, knocking the demigod’s aim awry so that the sharp point embedded itself into the concrete a few inches away from its intended target.

They fought back and forth, seemingly evenly matched in skill. Natasha gave herself completely over to her battle instincts, ducking, dodging and hopping over the sceptre and around Loki’s blows. At one point she seemed to have the upper hand, having stolen the magic spear from the demigod, standing over him, ready to bring it down on his throat; but was foiled when he kicked her legs out from under her.

And so the fight went on, slowly but surely turning into a battle of wills. Natasha fought harder than she had ever done before, every fibre of her willpower pushing her to destroy the man who had been so instrumental in the hell that had been the past few weeks. Loki battled back just as manically, his eyes burning brighter with the blue electricity as he threw blow after blow at her, exerting his strength to the maximum, determined to cling on to his rule.

Below them a crowd was gathering, bystanders following the noises of the battle itself and of the medical team, which had presumably arrived to deal with Bruce and Tony, not to mention the number of civilians who had been injured by falling debris. As a war raged above them they pulled out camera phones and video recorders, sending their evidence to friends. Natasha was furious.  _Hadn't she just fucking ordered them underground?_

Loki seemed to grow even more confident in front of his audience even as nature took its toll on Natasha’s fatigued body. She had not slept properly in weeks, had been through tremendous pain to escape the prison, flown from San Francisco to New York City via Norse God of Thunder, and now was being assaulted by a demigod gone mad with power. Her stamina was fading fast, a fact that Loki certainly noticed. She didn’t have a chance.

When her strength finally faltered he took full advantage of her slowing reflexes to cut her legs out from underneath her and send her sprawling to the edge of the building. Only at the last moment did she manage to find grip on a railing enough to stop herself from following her legs over the edge to her death.

Casually, the twisted god ambled to the edge where she clung on for her life, smirking down at her. “ _The itsy bitsy spider ran up the water spout_ ,” he sang mockingly, his voice completely devoid of any hint of mercy. He lifted up his boot over her hands. Her breath stopped. He was going to bring that foot down on her hands and it would be all over. She would be dead. She would never see Sofia again; never get to really know her daughter. She would never get to tease Tony, or watch old movies with Steve again. She would never be able to tell Clint how sorry she was.

_Clint._

God she had made so many mistakes with him. She wished now that she could go back and start everything over again, right to the moment that he put that arrowhead in her shoulder, the arrowhead that she could now feel pressed hard against her thigh through the pocket she kept it in…

“ _Down came the rain and washed the spider out…_ ” she saw his foot begin its journey down and closed her eyes, imagining her family and friends, all of them, and mentally apologizing to everyone of them. She waited for the inevitable sting and sensation of falling.

She waited…

Instead she felt a searing heat pass over her head and collide with something hard.  
She opened her eyes in time to see Thor toss his brother like a rag doll to the pavement, his face a mask of fury. The sceptre went scuttling to the edge and dropped out of sight onto what remained of Tony’s balcony. The god picked his brother back up and shook him hard. “Enough Loki!” he shouted. “You will not win this. Earth will never be yours! You will stop this now, and finally give up this poisonous dream! Look at what has become of you; you are now no more Asgardian or any other such honourable creature. End this now!” He gave the stunned looking villain another rough shake.

For a very brief moment Loki’s eyes cleared. The blue electricity faded leaving only green. “Thor?” Loki gasped, “I…I can’t make it stop…Thor it hurts…”

Thor’s eyes widened and his grasp slackened slightly. “Brother we can find a way to—”

With a sudden twist Loki yanked his way out of Thor’s grip, the blue electricity reclaiming his eyes again. He threw a hand out, smiling evilly as the sceptre returned to his hand just as Mjolnir did to his brother’s. “You fools,” hissed and raised his arm to send a deadly blast of magic at his brother, whose face bore and expression of utter confusion. “You can’t best me! I am Loki! I rule this—”

There was a whistling sound that cut through the air. Loki stumbled backward, screaming in pain as the long shaft of an arrow embedded itself in his eye socket. He was still screaming when the arrowhead exploded.

“NO!” Thor roared, but it was too late. There was almost nothing at all left of the demigod, save for what lay scattered on the ground around them. The hulking god fell to his knees, clutching at the last remains of his adopted brother, wailing something in a language Natasha didn’t understand but that clearly spoke of a profound mourning.

And in the midst of it all landed Clint and Tony, who hauled her up over the edge of the roof whereupon she lay gasping for breath surrounded by debris.  
“My god Stark,” she gasped after a moment, “You’re okay.”

“People keep trying to kill me in my own house,” Tony said amiably, “You would think that they should realize that I’ve made that pretty much impossible. I’m a genius remember?”

Natasha laughed breathlessly. Tony Stark ladies and gentlemen, in all the modesty he was capable of.

She sat up, her muscles crying out in protest as she suddenly remembered something important. “Steve!” she cried out, “And Bruce! Where are they…are they okay?”  
“Bruce is fine,” Tony told her, “He crashed into Trump Tower, knocked himself out cold, and was picked up by SHIELD med. Last I heard good old Donald was having a hissy fit about the varnish on his floors being scratched. What a diva,” Stark waved his hand dismissively.

Natasha couldn’t resist the little giggle that slipped out because here was Tony Stark, accusing someone else of overly dramatic behaviour and wasn’t that just rich?  
Even he seemed to find it a little amusing, though the smirk faded quickly when he glanced over to where Steve was laying, still unconscious and surrounded by a SHIELD medical team and Clint, who was looking very pointedly away from where Natasha was. “Is…is the Captain alright?” Tony asked hesitantly, obviously trying to give off the vibe that he didn’t really care. He was of course, failing miserably at that.

“Go and check on him,” Natasha said quietly. “I’m sure you’re the first person he’d want to see.”

“I doubt that,” Tony said quietly. Even though they were now all aware from Natasha’s debriefing how exactly Loki had manipulated them, there were still a lot of things floating around that were no longer secrets. Things that changed everything from the way it was before. Even though Tony knew Steve hadn’t actually broken up with him, and Steve knew that Tony and Bruce’s “affair” had been made up using pictures stolen from Steve’s missing phone (Tony had apparently left the photos as a “present” to the Captain, a gift that wasn’t terribly successful given that Cap had no idea that his phone even took photos); things were awkward, to say the least.

“Tony Stark,” Natasha said with a heavy sigh, “Go to him and sit there, and when he wakes up, kiss and make up.”

“It’s not that simple,” Tony protested.

“Then simplify it genius,” she retorted.

He looked as though he was going to argue for a moment, then stood up with a small smile on his lips and walked away towards the people trying to revive Steve. She knew that they would figure out a way to sort everything out.

She was less certain about herself.

Struggling to her feet, she walked across the battered rooftop towards Clint. He saw her coming and turned to face her. For a long moment they stood facing each other, neither one speaking.

Finally Natasha broke the silence. “Where is Sofia?”

“She’s in a bunker with Fury, Hill, and Coulson. They took off when Loki took over and have been underground ever since.”

“Where?” Natasha asked, “Did they put them in the Boston safe house?”

“No, they literally put them underground. As in, in a bunker we built a few years ago under the Russian Tea Room.”

Natasha smiled a bit at the name. The silence resumed.

After a long moments Clint finally broke the silence. “Okay, so I have to know,” he blurted out. “Is it true? Did you and Loki…” He trailed off unable to finish the sentence.

Shamefacedly, Natasha nodded.

“But you ended up in prison, and came back,” Clint said. “So what the hell is that?”

Natasha thought for a moment. “I screwed up,” she said. “I was compromised, and he took advantage of that. He used me, gained my trust and then stole my memories. It was like being a puppet…” she trailed off with a shudder.

“I know what that’s like,” Clint said quietly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. And to her relief he seemed to understand how much.

After a moment she turned to him again. “So was it really as great as you imagined?” she asked, an old conversation coming to mind, “Putting the arrow through his eye?”

His mouth twitched. “It helped,” he admitted, “Especially given…recent events.”

“You always were the jealous type,” she smiled.

“Deadly,” he deadpanned. Both of them glanced over to the remains of Loki and both broke out into giggles.

“We are terrible people,” Natasha laughed. “We shouldn’t laugh.”

“We killed people for a living,” Clint pointed out. “I really don’t think it makes a difference at this point.”

They both lapsed into muffled hysterics again.

Natasha suddenly felt extraordinarily tired. It wasn’t really surprising given the events of the last few weeks, but it hit her like a ton of bricks, her legs nearly giving out beneath her. Clint caught her against his strong arm, sending a little tingle up her spine. She looked at him and from this close angle of his face she could see a lot of things. She had always been able to read Clint Barton better than most. She recognized the crease that appeared in his forehead when he was stressed or angry, the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth. She could recognize the tiny scar on his forehead from when she’d had to clock him in the head to release him from Loki’s spell. Right now was no different. As always she could read a lot of things in his face, though some of them were new.

She knew that he still loved her. He was upset, he was angry sure, but you don’t just get rid of over a decade of love overnight. She was not forgiven. She still had a lot to answer for, but maybe, just maybe, they could find a way to work this out. It would not be the same, and she knew that. Trust had been broken. But maybe, she found herself thinking, maybe she could hope. Maybe they could find a way to move past this as a team.

 _We will never again live the way we used to be_ , she thought to herself, _but maybe we could be better_.

For the first time in a long while, she had hope. And it was with hope that she reached out her hand and took his, allowing him to lead her back into what was left of the Avengers’ Tower.

The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for sticking around! I'd love to hear what you thought!  
> As well, I am considering writing an epilogue or perhaps a few one-shots to tie up any loose ends that might have been left. That all depends on reader responses though.  
> Thanks again for sticking this out with me!


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